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THE WORLD WE LIVE IN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE 
WORLD WE LIVE IN 

OR 

PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE IN THE 
LIGHT OF MODERN THOUGHT 



BY 



GEORGE STUART FULLERTON 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEW YORK 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

All rights reserved 



v 



*>> 



Copyright, 1912, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1912. 



NortoaoiJ iPrtss 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



SCI.A320198 



TO 

THE HONORABLE 
JOHN MARSHALL GEST 

THIS TOKEN 

OF A 

LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP 



PREFACE 

It is a fair question how dry a man has a right to be when 
he is writing upon a subject which ought to be of interest to 
every thoughtful man. The world in which we find ourselves 
is the common property of the learned and the unlearned. 
The problem of its nature and of our own adjustment to it 
stares us all in the face, if we think at all. 

Hence, I make no apology for having written in a very 
plain and straightforward way. A truth simply stated is 
none the less a truth. An error stated in obscure and tech- 
nical language is given a breastplate which may shield an 
unworthy life. 

I hope no one will be deterred from reading my book by 
the rather formidable collection of notes appended to it. 
They are intended chiefly for my professional colleagues, 
and not for the general reader. The argument of the book 
is supposed to stand upon its own feet, and can be judged 
without reference to them. My program is contained in the 
first chapter. He to whom this makes no appeal need not 
read further, for my problem and its solution will not interest 
him. 

That I am wholly in the right, or that I have said what I 
have meant to say as clearly and well as it should be said, 
I do not for a moment suppose. He who regards himself as 
infallible in philosophy, or who speaks with authority, stands 
revealed as lacking in a sense of humor. Did I suppose it 
would be of service, I should indicate the chapters which 
seem to me most in need of emendation by some one more 
acute ; but doubtless the critic will prefer selecting these for 
himself. 



viii Preface 

However, the work is intended, in part, for those who are 
not first of all critics, but who read with the desire to discover 
something, even if it be inadequately expressed, that may- 
prove helpful to them. I earnestly hope that such may not 
go away empty-handed. 

The man who stands quite alone may well ask himself 
whether he is standing just where he should. In offering 
the fruit of my reflections to others, I am encouraged by the 
thought that I am not standing alone, but that what has 
seemed to me a reasonable attitude toward the world has 
seemed reasonable also to many other men, both learned 
and unlearned, who are not devoid of judgment. I am will- 
ing to stand, with the reservations indicated in my book, as 
the champion of Everybody's World, — the world of common 
experience and of science, — maintaining that our first duty 
toward it is to accept it, and our second to try to understand 
it. I claim without hesitation that we may not properly be 
said to understand it, but rather to do it violence, if we, as 
philosophers, feel free to perform such operations upon it 
that it emerges from our hands robbed of its familiar and 
rather unmistakable features. We wrong it, if we dissolve it 
in the acrid vapors of a general skepticism ; we wrong it, if 
we thrust it out of sight and call it unknowable ; we wrong 
it, if we evoke a magic formula and substitute a shining appa- 
rition for homely Mother Earth. 

The philosophic reader will recognize that I have felt it 
necessary to follow a path which leads in the same general 
direction as that chosen by a goodly number of contemporary 
writers. These modern realists are men of keen mind who 
appear to be impressed with the necessity of doing full justice 
to our experience of the world as it presents itself in the 
actual body of human knowledge. I may mention the names 
of Woodbridge, McGilvary, Miller, Holt, Marvin, Montague, 
Perry, Pitkin, Spaulding, and Kemp-Smith, in America ; of 
Stout, Russell, and Moore, in Great Britain ; and of Kiilpe, 



Preface ix 

in Germany. They do not in all respects agree with each 
other, and certainly I do not expect them to approve all the 
opinions which I express. But they appear to me to be 
pressing on, each as he best can, toward the same goal. If 
I understand them aright, it is that which I have set before 
myself — the working out of a sober realism, which will not 
refuse to accept suggestions from the idealist where such 
seem helpful, but which will take pains not to be misled 
into doing injustice to the unmistakably real world given in 
experience. 

GEORGE STUART FULLERTON. 
Columbia University, 
January, 19 1 2. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Everybody's World i 

II. The Problem of Everybody's World . . . 16 

III. The World as Idea 32 

IV. The Unreality of the World as Idea ... 45 
V. The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness . 60 

VI. The World as Phenomenon 72 

VII. The Reality of the World as Phenomenon . . 91 

VIII. Our World and Other Worlds 99 

IX. The World of the New Realism . . . .109 

X. The World Without and the World Within . 129 

XI. The New Realism and Everybody's World . .148 

XII. The World as Mind-stuff and the World as Will 167 

XIII. A World of the New Idealism 183 

XIV. Another World of the New Idealism . . .198 
XV. The Glory of It .215 

XVI. Playing with the World 229 

XVII. The World of Sober Earnest 253 

XVIII. The World of Knowledge and the World of Belief 262 



THE WORLD WE LIVE IN 



CHAPTER I 

everybody's world 

I sit down at this desk to write, betraying in the very act 
my conviction that there are such things as pen, ink, and paper, 
a desk, a room, a world beyond it which I do not now perceive, 
persons in it who will read my reflections and understand or 
misunderstand them. 

I know well that if I sit here dreaming and do not write, 
I shall not be printed, shall not be read, and shall neither con- 
vince, nor arouse opposition. I have said, "sit here dreaming," 
and the words mark my recognition of the fact that before me 
is a real desk in a real room, a something very carefully to be 
distinguished from those second-hand existences, those eva- 
nescent imitations, those reflections and echoes, that people 
the realms of dream and imagination. 

"I shall not convince any one" — to whom do these words 
refer ? I am not concerned to convince the men in my dream ; 
or those phantom adversaries whom I can, by a free play of 
fancy, call into an unreal being, and hold them there long 
enough to secure myself the idle gratification of their phantom 
discomfiture, of their pretended rout and confusion in the face 
of the irresistible thrust of my argument. These men are 
shadows cast by my hands, my creations, puppets on my own 
private and insignificant stage. If I persuade them of the 
truth of my utterances, I am only reassuring myself; if I 
scatter them in flight, it is my right hand overcoming my left, 
and the triumph brings with it small cause for gratulation. 



2 The World We Live In 

I am concerned to convince men who have bodies as real 
as this desk, this chair, this room lined with books, men who 
belong to the same world with these things. Men who could 
sit down here and write — who may now be writing elsewhere 
— who are quite able to hold their own against me, answering 
thrust with thrust, and surprising me by the skill with which 
they parry. Such men reveal an independence little flattering 
to my pride ; they may give me suggestions as to how I should 
hold my blade, or even criticize adversely the costume in which 
I see fit to walk abroad, indicating that I might have learnt to 
drape myself in a decent obscurity had I sat longer at the feet 
of Hegel. He who lays aside his cloak takes the risk of ex- 
hibiting before the world evidences of poverty which the self- 
respecting prefer to keep for their own contemplation. 

These my real neighbors, my friends or my foes, are not 
fugitive existences, irresponsible vagrants, that appear for a 
moment and then vanish, leaving no trace. They have a 
domicile and are to be accounted for. All of them are men of 
ancient lineage. Their ancestors, unknown to me, and im- 
perfectly known to them, have from time immemorial had 
their place in the material world. They themselves now hold 
such a place. Some day they will be dissolved into their ele- 
ments, which elements will not fade into the nothingness 
which awaits such stuff as dreams are made of, but will en- 
dure and go their ceaseless round in ever new combinations 
and dissolutions. 

I write, then, for real men in a real world. It is permissible 
in poetry to say all the world's a stage ; but to confound the 
players who strut and fret their parts upon this stage with the 
shadowy personages who act for me alone, and who consent to 
annihilation when I begin to yawn, is not permissible in prose. 
I must take my neighbor more seriously than this. He is 
independent, disputatious, not in the least inclined to admit 
that I am the Master of the Show, and not greatly impressed 



Everybody s World 3 

with my philosophy. I must at him again ! And I must take 
care not to underrate him. 

My neighbor is a man of sense, and is not to be treated as a 
heathen and a publican. In the very act of revolving in my 
mind various clever assaults upon his philosophical faith, I 
am checked by the reflection that we have much in common. 
We long ago hit upon a modus vivendi, and the ordinary com- 
merce of life has been, and is, carried on satisfactorily. We 
live in the same town, if not in the same street. We speak 
the same language, save when the fine frenzy of speculation 
betrays us into utterances out of the common. Our actions 
seem to give the lie to those verbal extravagances which alarm 
the timid, but which do not really portend a disastrous out- 
break of hostilities and the severance of all cordial relations. 

All of which means that, whatever our theories, however 
original and startling, however fine-spun, dazzling, and irides- 
cent, we actually find ourselves in a world, and pay to it the 
substantial tribute of involuntary recognition. It is the world 
of the man in the street, it is true, but it is by no means his 
peculiar property. From it the scholar must set out, if he 
will discover other worlds ; to it he must come back, if he will 
persuade any one that he has really discovered anything. 

This world, the world of common experience and of scientific 
knowledge, is the very ground beneath our feet ; we cannot so 
much as leave it, without depending upon its aid. With it the 
philosopher has never been wholly satisfied, and for good 
reason. It is imperfectly illuminated ; we see but a small 
part of it from any given point upon it ; it is easy to miscon- 
ceive what we do see, and we are brought constantly to a real- 
ization of our ignorance and error. What are we to think of 
the world as a whole ? What should be our attitude towards 
it ? Some men never raise such questions. The philosophers 
do ; and they seem to them among the most important ques- 
tions that can be raised. 



4 The World We Live In 

But there are philosophers and philosophers. To some, 
Everybody's World is little better than the City of Destruction, 
a place to leave in haste. Its streets and byways are half 
forgotten, its laws and usages allowed to slip out of mind. 
When such men come back to Everybody's World, and try to 
hold converse with their fellows, their utterances sound 
arbitrary and fantastic. What they say of golden streets 
leads us to believe they have been dreaming and inspires 
curiosity rather than respect. Others treat our common home 
with more consideration. They are unwilling to take our ac- 
count of it, which they find more or less inarticulate, and they 
claim that the landscape before them is veiled in mist. Every- 
body's World is not to them precisely the world; but it is a 
view of the world, the view of the world which is vouchsafed 
to us all to begin with. It marks the direction in which we must 
look with straining eyes, if we will attain to something better. 
He who turns his back upon it will not find a world at all. If 
he is ingenious, he can people empty space with ghosts, but he 
cannot do more. 

I have said that the philosopher is not wholly satisfied 
with Everybody's World, and distrusts our accounts of it. He 
may well complain, not merely of the indefiniteness and incon- 
sistency of our utterances, but also of our reticences. There is 
much that we do not tell, for the very good reason that there is 
much that we do not see — much even that appears to the 
more clear-sighted to be spread out before our very eyes. 
Like Monsieur Jourdain, we talk prose without knowing it. 
Nevertheless, it would be going too far to say that there is not a 
very general consensus of opinion as to the broader features 
presented by Everybody's World. He who would have us 
believe that they are delusive appearances, and that the world, 
properly so called, is to be conceived as without them, totters 
under a burden of proof of quite overwhelming proportions. 
We may leave him for the present, and sketch those features 



Everybody s World 5 

in barest outline. The sketch will be recognized as true to 
life, I think, by an overwhelming majority of those who have so 
far succeeded in dispensing with artificial aids to vision. 

To begin with, let me set down the system of physical things 
to which this desk, this room, my body, and the indefinite 
beyond in which they have their insignificant place, indubitably 
belong. I cannot begin elsewhere, if I would. At no time 
within my memory has any feature of my experience been more 
insistent and persistent. This system of things we admit as 
common property, however we may dispute touching the mean- 
ing of that ambiguous expression. My house and your house 
are in the same street ; you can visit me, look at my books, 
handle my pen, take up this paper and shake your head over it. 
We may in moments of irritation deny our neighbor a mind ; 
but to deny our neighbor a body is to deny him in Mo, to 
snuff him out, to extrude him from existence. It is not so 
much as an exit in the direction of the fourth dimension; 
it is not an exit at all ; it is black annihilation. 

In the second place, I must sketch in the stage puppets 
which made their appearance a few pages back. Everybody 
knows that he imagines things, and that he is visited by dreams. 
But he is perfectly aware of the fact that neither the gate of 
horn nor the gate of ivory are real entrances to the house of 
life. They give admission to the abode of shades. In a given 
instance a man may not feel sure whether he has to do with a 
shade or with that which casts a shadow; but when the 
point is once determined, everybody — I do not include the 
idiots, infants, and some savages, referred to by Locke — every- 
body resolutely condemns the shade to remain in its own place. 
There can be no doubt that men generally distinguish with a 
good deal of sharpness between things and mere imaginings. 

Nor are they wholly ignorant of the distinction between 
things perceived and the appearances of things. Certainly 
they make use of the distinction every day. When they grow a 



6 The World We Live In 

trifle scientific they are apt to call the appearances, as such, 
percepts, and they say that some percepts give more satis- 
factory information about things than do others. The fact 
itself, however, is not a modern discovery. It was known to 
prehistoric man, who crawled up to the moving figure in the 
distance to discover whether it should be welcomed as a friend 
or attacked as an enemy. In the same general class with 
things dreamt, things imaginary, and the percepts of things, 
belong other experiences regarded by the psychologist as 
falling within his special province, and referred by the man who 
is not a psychologist somewhat vaguely to his "mind." Thus, 
everybody knows that sensations, emotions, and volitions are 
not physical things and must be excluded from the realm of 
such. 

To return to the physical things. In Everybody's World it 
is assumed that they exist continuously and go through various 
changes independently of our perception of them. The world 
was here before we came into it ; it will roll on after we are 
gone. We do not stop the cosmic clock when we nod, nor does 
only so much of it exist and function as falls within the illu- 
minated circle of our field of vision. For us, things appear or 
disappear ; in the world, they exist or they do not exist. The 
distinction is clearly marked in human speech, and is observed 
when men discourse with one another. Any form of expression 
which seems to slur it over arouses suspicion and antagonism in 
the natural man, nor does it meet with a hospitable reception 
until the ground is prepared for it. 

And the physical things thus given an independent and a 
continuous existence are assumed to belong to the one world, 
to form some sort of a system. Let the man who doubts this 
try to persuade his simpler neighbor of the existence of a planet 
at no distance and in no direction from any other planet, of the 
existence of a man who has at no time been anywhere. Such a 
man, he exclaims, is no man ; such- existence is nonexistence. 



Everybody s World 7 

Or, if you please, such a man is a man in your mind, of whom you 
are talking incoherently. A real man must be an historical 
character, however humble the part he plays in history. A 
real planet must have its appointed path in a space continuous 
with ours. The most independent of the unlearned hesitate 
to carry their pluralism so far as to assign to a thing that is no 
thing a place that is no place, and to apply to this spectral bit 
of property the inappropriate name of real estate. 

We should not allow ourselves to be seduced by an ancient 
tradition into thinking too lightly of this physical system. 
In Everybody's World it fulfills a most important function which 
some have overlooked. It has been said that mental phe- 
nomena of all sorts are, by men generally, excluded from the 
realm of physical things. I may add that mental phenomena 
are not, by men generally, accorded a continuous and independ- 
ent existence, and given a place in a single system analogous 
to the material system. This does not mean that they are sim- 
ply left at loose ends, treated as outlaws, relegated to a chaos 
beyond the confines of our ordered universe. They are gath- 
ered up and put into minds, which minds are referred to bodies 
with their definite place in the system of things. 

In their account of these minds, and in their suggestions 
as to the nature of this reference, most men are highly unsatis- 
factory, if, indeed, they have anything to say at all. This is 
one of the dark places in Everybody's World, and few pretend 
to see clearly. Nevertheless, is it not everywhere accepted 
that every thought must be thought by somebody, that every 
dream must be somebody's dream ? A sensation at large has 
no more right to exist than a planet at large. How shall we 
determine whose thought, whose dream, whose sensation? 
How answer the insistent questions : When ? Where ? By 
turning to the world of physical things, whose "when's" and 
whose "where's" are spread out before us. It gives into our 
hands map and calendar. 



8 The World We Live In 

It seems scarcely necessary to point out that, having dis- 
tinguished as they do between ideas and things, and having 
referred certain ideas to certain bodies existing at certain times, 
men generally are in little danger of confusing their ideas of 
things with the things, unless it be in an occasional instance, 
and through some blunder. Caesar's dream of a triumphal 
entry into Rome is not a triumphal entry into Rome. My 
thought of Caesar is not Caesar, nor is my thought of his 
dream his dream. That we can think of things physical and 
mental is accepted without question in Everybody's World. 
Let the learned decide how this is possible. But woe be to the 
scholar, be he learned as Rabelais, who would persuade us 
that the thoughts of things are not different from the things, 
and that to the things must be assigned the same place in the 
universe that we have assigned to the thoughts ! This is 
anarchy ! This brings down our world about our ears in a mo- 
ment ; the fair structure crumbles into a shapeless ruin, and 
the dust of it blinds and chokes us. 

So much for the most striking features of the world which 
we all accept to begin with ; which we make our point of de- 
parture when we set out to find another. It has been shrewdly 
pointed out that it is hardly enough of a world to be called a 
world from the point of view of theory, 1 though it is a very good 
world to move about in. Thus, it is possible for a man to object : 
"Physical things? Of course I accept them. But what are 
physical things? In what sense is the external world ex- 
ternal?" "Independent of me? Of course the things I see 
and feel are, in a sense, independent of me. They are not my 
dreams. But are they not, after all, the things I see and j eel?" 
" Things and appearances ? Keep the distinction, if you will — 
and then try to describe to me things apart from appearances." 
"Minds referred to bodies? You have indicated that things 
mental are of so peculiar a nature that they cannot be looked 
for in, on, under, or in the neighborhood of any body. Your 



Everybody's World 9 

'reference' is no better than a pillar of cloud by night. You 
have presented us with a word lighted up by no ray of signifi- 
cance." 

In other words, a man may accept and object in the same 
breath ; accept the outline, complain that, until more lines are 
added, the character of the figure cannot even be guessed. 
Nevertheless, it is no small thing to have even an outline, a 
patch of common ground, a spot on which we may meet and 
agree to separate. And it should never be forgotten that Every- 
body's World is really enough of a world to move about in, to 
carry on the ordinary business of life in. It is quite possible 
for us there to adjust ourselves to the present and to make 
provision against the future. 

This means that it has a constitution with which it is wise 
for us to acquaint ourselves. A dawning suspicion of this 
glimmers in the mind of the infant that decides that one inser- 
tion of the finger into the candle flame is enough. With 
advancing years it is impressed upon us in a thousand ways 
that it is prudent to find out about things and to adapt our- 
selves to our surroundings. We repeat with approbation the 
aphorism of Bacon: "Man, the servant and interpreter of 
nature, does and understands as much as his observations on 
the order of nature, either with regard to things or to the mind, 
permit him, and he neither knows nor is capable of more." 

It is matter of common experience that the world is a very 
big world, and that we are a very little part of it. It is a world 
in which, on the whole, a man must keep his eyes open, if he will 
not come to grief. To be sure, some are so situated in it that 
they may close their eyes to much, and, nevertheless, survive. 
All ignorances are not equally fatal to all persons. And there 
can be no doubt that we really play a part, that we have some 
control. Over the figures on my own private stage, over my 
thoughts and imaginings, I seem to exercise, if not an absolute, 
at least a powerful, sway. Over other things I cannot exercise 



io The World We Live In 

the same authority, but I am not without some influence. I 
can move my little body about, and can cause some changes in 
material things. Of the limitations both of my knowledge and 
of my power I may remain ignorant as long as I am not put 
to the test. Where, in the ordinary course of nature, the test 
is a thing to be expected, and is palpable and undeniable, 
men learn to conduct themselves with modesty and to speak 
with caution. 

The recognition of our somewhat humble place in the system 
of things may fairly be included among the features of Every- 
body's World. Men do not attempt to control the stars in their 
courses, or to call spirits from the vasty deep, being well aware 
that the attempt would be futile. It is everybody's secret 
that the little sphere of the known is bounded by the limitless 
unknown. And both in common life and in the sciences there 
is a restless activity, the aim of which is to increase our knowl- 
edge and to add to our power. 

I expressly include the sciences because the man of science 
lives in the same world with the rest of us. We should have 
the grace to see in him an honored inhabitant of that world, and 
we should listen to his utterances with respect. But if we 
have clear vision, it must be plain to us that, whether he is 
giving us an account of the past history of our solar system, 
is predicting the return of a comet, is indicating the presence 
in space of planets not as yet revealed to any human eye, or is 
setting up a theory touching the imperceptible constituents 
of the bodies which surround us, he is, nevertheless, describing 
our world, or guessing at its contents. It is always possible 
for him to do his work without raising the special questions 
which have been dwelt upon above. When he has done it, 
we may treat the things of which he speaks as we have treated 
the objects that knock every day at our doors. Planet, or 
atom, or electron — is the thing real and physical ? What does 
it mean to be a physical thing ? Is the thing in space, and re- 



Everybody s World 1 1 

Iated to other objects in space ? How does the object differ 
from my idea of it? Such questions the man who gives us 
information about the thing is bound neither to ask nor to 
answer. His world is Everybody's World; he should know 
it well, but it is not his duty to leave it and to seek another. 

That it is a matter of practical importance to us all to increase 
our information is a commonplace. If we are to get what we 
want, we must be able to see what we want. Time spent in 
extolling the merits of science is, in our day, time lost. As well 
enter upon an argument to prove to men that we cannot 
orient ourselves satisfactorily so long as the shades of night 
envelop us, and that we walk most securely by daylight. 
Nevertheless, it is a good thing to bear in mind what the 
sciences do for us and what they do not do. They give us a 
fuller and better revelation of the world of our common expe- 
rience, informing us as to what has been, showing us what is, 
and giving us hints as to what we are to expect under given 
circumstances. But science, unless it passes over to something 
which men have usually called by another name, does not exhibit 
the world under a different light from that to which we are 
accustomed ; and to the reflective this light has always seemed 
in certain respects an insufficient illumination. 

There are those who are inspired by a lively curiosity to see 
the world otherwise than through the eyes of the average man, 
even the average man of broad information. What the latter 
takes for granted strikes them as problematic ; what he jolts 
over with indifference, scarcely feeling the shock, impresses 
them as intolerable inconsistency. Must one, they protest, 
ever remain on the surface of things ? Are we to be such 
spectators as sit, open-eyed and attentive, to be sure, watching 
the shifting scenes which succeed one another and recording 
the lines pronounced by the actors, but never asking themselves 
whether the play is comedy, tragedy, or melodrama, is consistent 
in its several parts, is well put together, has a moral purpose 



12 The World We Live In 

or is intended only to amuse ? Nor is an intellectual curiosity 
the only spur to reflection upon the world and its meaning. 
Men burn to attain to some sort of a world-vision — to see 
themselves and the system of things in perspective. They feel 
that, could they attain to this, it might introduce into life a 
consistency and harmony lacking in the hand-to-mouth exist- 
ence of the man of limited horizon and of many maxims. 
What is wanted is such a view of the world as may make pos- 
sible an attitude towards it, as may suggest a rule of life. To 
many, some such view is an imperious emotional need. 

But must we not admit that even those who think little and 
read less, the unreflective many, have some sort of an outlook 
upon the world and an attitude towards it ? There is such a 
thing as a philosophy which is the passive precipitate of tradi- 
tion, temperament, and past experience of life. Those who 
accept it are little troubled by problems ; obscurity and confu- 
sion are familiar elements in their universe, and are taken as a 
matter of course ; an occasional self-contradiction causes no 
acute discomfort. They can make up their minds about the 
world and their own place in it, without raising difficult questions 
and trying to answer them. No problem can plague us, if we 
will only put it out of our minds and refuse to think about it. 

Manifestly, such a philosophy will not satisfy the reflective. 
It is the philosophy of the man who sees nothing to complain of 
in Everybody's World ; it is an instinctive reaction to environ- 
ment. The more thoughtful must have something else, and 
for help in their need they naturally turn to those apostles of 
reflection, the philosophers. These men, in their pursuit of 
knowledge, are not supposed to neglect wisdom. They take 
large views of things. To whom else shall we go, if we wish to 
see united into a harmonious whole the broken and scattered bits 
of our experience ? Who else can light up for us the dark places 
of the world of common knowledge and reveal to us the world? 

I have been careful to say above "the philosophers," not 



Everybody's World 13 

"philosophy." The former are numerous and much in evi- 
dence ; the latter — if by philosophy we mean the true and au- 
thoritative philosophy — is more difficult to identify, and he 
who seeks it must grow accustomed to hearing "lo, here !" and 
"lo, there !" uttered, sometimes intones of hesitating uncer- 
tainty, sometimes with unblushing and blatant assurance. But 
to the philosophers we can turn, and we may ask them : "How 
should we think of the world ? and what is its significance for 
us?" It is something to have friends and advisers, even if 
they be men like ourselves, with no pretentions to infallibility. 

The perplexing thing is that there is such a bewildering va- 
riety of philosophers. We have a world to begin with ; one 
not wholly satisfactory, but, on the other hand, not wholly bad. 
There is a body of knowledge which we accept and must accept. 
This we look to the philosopher to render clearer, more con- 
sistent, more significant. But we do not go to him to have him 
rob us of our world altogether, or to perform upon it such opera- 
tions that it is no longer recognizable as a world. And some 
philosophers do appear to attack the problem of the world with 
an incontinent energy that impresses the sober man as promis- 
ing nothing less than demolition ; while others wave the magic 
wand of transformation, and, in exchange for homely and 
familiar Mother Earth, present us with a whole galaxy of 
shining luminaries, which we accept doubtfully, uncertain that 
the donor has the right to bestow what we never suspected him 
of having in his possession. 

Thus, there have been those who have been so impressed 
with the difficulties in the way of giving a satisfactory account 
of the world, that they have decided to get along without a 
world. They have counseled a skepticism that leaves the mind 
empty and the will palsied. There are those who have thrust 
the real world out of sight, and have fed mankind upon a diet of 
copies and images. There are those who have made of the world 
an unreal appearance which rather conceals than reveals the 



14 The World We Live In 

reality which it is not supposed to resemble, the reality whose 
muffled footfalls we can faintly hear, but whose form cannot 
even be guessed, as it lurks forever in the shade. 

Others have announced discoveries of a more cheerful nature, 
but which seem as startling to the common understanding of 
man as they are flattering to his vanity. Have we not been 
told that the real things about us, the whole broad world of 
which we feel ourselves to be such an insignificant part, may be 
regarded as our idea ? The new sense of proprietorship may 
well overcome the sentiment of shrinking modesty with which 
most men reflect upon the contrast between their little selves 
and the universe in which they have heretofore thought they 
lived. Some authorities inform us that we create our world, 
and indicate that much comfort is to be derived from that 
thought. Those who go so far as to tell us that we can, within 
certain broad limits, make it what we please, encourage us to 
embrace an optimism in comparison with which that of Candide 
becomes a vanishing quantity. 

The philosophers speak, thus, a varied language. Where 
shall we look to find a check upon their utterances ? Shall we in- 
cline to follow those who consign us to bottomless ignorance and 
dark despair, those who cheer us with roseate dreams, or those 
who walk soberly and say little that is startling ? If we are wise, 
we shall listen to every suggestion, be thankful for every hint. 
Left quite to our own devices we are comparatively helpless, for 
no human being, however fertile his genius, could begin to im- 
agine all the solutions of the world-problem which have been be- 
gotten of the collective ingenuity of mankind. But adopt every 
suggestion we cannot ; they are too many and too diverse. We 
must choose between them. On what principle shall we choose ? 

I suggest, as a tentative principle, that, in taking the measure 
of new worlds, it is not wise to let the old world, in which we 
have all lived, slip quite out of view. That it is not a very 
good world for all purposes, I have frankly admitted. It is, 



Everybody's World 15 

however, at least a world, and the others have yet to prove their 
right to the title. My suggestion is not gratuitous and super- 
fluous, as will, I hope, be made plain in the chapters to follow. 
It is possible for a philosopher, in his eager pursuit of new 
truth, to lose sight of this or that rather undeniable feature of 
the world of common knowledge. He who thus gives the rein 
to his invention offers us, in place of what seems to be palpable, 
if imperfectly apprehended, truth, what does not easily differ- 
entiate itself from romance. 

One objection to my suggestion will, I am sure, at once arise 
in the minds of some persons. To sweep and to garnish the 
house one lives in is a commonplace business ; to enter the 
enchanted palace is to thrill with emotion. How can one take 
those exciting aerial flights in the company of the philosopher, 
if one is perpetually to be feeling for the ground with one's 
foot ? The headlong plunge through eddying gulfs of air has a 
fascination which some are not willing to deny themselves. 
Such will complain : If you really have no intention of reveal- 
ing to us a new heaven and anew earth, why write ? What have 
you to say that can interest us ? 

To this I answer : Tastes differ. There are men who eagerly 
desire to see clearly, to come to a better understanding of the 
world and of their own position in it, but who have no little 
fear of becoming the victims of illusion. Such men are pos- 
sessed of the conservative instinct that leads them to distrust 
prophetic utterances, acute surprises, sudden transformations, 
detonations, and showers of colored stars. They regard the 
world of our common experience as ground on which even the 
philosopher should build — of course, after sounding it and 
making sure of his foundation. They ask him to light his 
lamp, not to rub it. Such men will not be offended at my sug- 
gestion that, in our voyages of discovery, it may be prudent to 
keep in mind the distance and direction of the place from which 
we started, and to which we hope some day to return. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PROBLEM OE EVERYBODY'S WORLD 

We have seen in the last chapter that one of the most 
striking features of our world is a system of physical things inde- 
pendent, in some sense, of our percepts and ideas, but not unre- 
lated to them. This physical system seems to be the very 
backbone of the universe presented in our experience. If we 
refuse to acknowledge it, what significance remains to our words 
when we say : My present percept of this desk ? Your mem- 
ory of the same bit of furniture ? The honor of the man who 
died o' Wednesday? Nebuchadnezzar's dream? Abstract 
space and time are checks, not specie. Unless there be spaces 
and times — places and dates of things and their changes — 
those checks are so much waste paper. 

We have all been at some time ignorant of the world-order; 
we have grown up, and we find ourselves in an orderly world. 
How have we discovered that physical system of things which 
relegates even dreams and fancies to their proper place and 
makes it possible to identify them as dreams and fancies? 
How does each of us recognize it now, in the midst of the be- 
wildering variety of experiences that come to him, many of 
which experiences he sets aside as not physical, but mental ? 

I speak of the desk in my room, of the apple that happens 
to be lying upon it, of the clanging bell in the street. If asked 
to do so, I do not hesitate to describe the things of which I 
speak. This should indicate that I know something about them. 
In Everybody's World it is assumed that I do know something 
about them, and am not talking at random. How do I know ? 
I can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. The things present 

16 



The Problem of Everybody s World 1 7 

themselves either directly, or through certain proxies. Thus, 
I can describe the desk because I see and touch it ; I can infer 
what sort of a bell is distracting the street because I hear the 
strident sounds. 

But the simplicity of this explanation is too great to make it 
satisfactory to one who is capable of the least reflection. The 
desk and the apple do present themselves, it is true ; they ap- 
pear in my experience. But they appear under such varying 
guises that it implies quite an education on my part to recognize 
that I am in each case concerned with my desk and my apple. 
Like every one else, I early made the discovery that I cannot 
perceive things except through my sense organs, and it is very 
evident that a thing tricks itself out in a different costume for 
presentation at the court of each sense. Things do not feel 
colored, smell hard, or taste sonorous. Moreover, they keep 
changing their clothes as they approach the throne — a desk 
seen at a distance and a desk seen close at hand may be the 
same desk, but it must be confessed that they do not look the 
same ; the clangor of the bell may be deafening, but it is so to 
the man in the belfry, not to me, here in my study and behind 
closed windows. 

In the absence of all experiences of a thing, I certainly do 
not get the thing at all — I perceive nothing. On the other 
hand, we say that things present themselves, we speak of our- 
selves as perceiving them, when we have, now one experience, 
now another, now a third ; indeed, when we have any one of an 
indefinite number of experiences each of which differs from 
each other, and some of which seem so different from some oth- 
ers that they scarcely appear to have a common measure. He 
who reflects upon these facts cannot avoid making some dis- 
tinction between a thing and its appearances. He begins to 
ask himself anxiously : Does the thing really present itself ? 
and if so, in what sense ? Stripped of appearances, the thing 
eludes us altogether; it is not distinguishable from nothing. 



1 8 The World We Live In 

On the other hand, what appearance maybe accepted as giving us 
the thing ? Is not every appearance rather the cloak than the 
man, and does not the man change his cloak to suit all weath- 
ers ? These questions do not become the less insistent as we 
increase our scientific knowledge; they call the more loudly 
for an answer. He who tells me that the pen between my 
fingers consists of groups of atoms, and the atoms, perhaps, of 
something even more elusive and difficult to apprehend, does 
not allay my discontent with the simple and apparently truth- 
ful statement that things present themselves. I am impelled 
to torment myself with the query : What is really out there, exist- 
ing and functioning ? What is it like ? 

Very early in the history of speculative thought men began 
to plague themselves with such reflections. Their material 
lay immediately before their eyes, and they could not overlook 
it. The plainest of plain men knows that some appearances are 
unsatisfactory. If he can make no distinction between appear- 
ances and appearances, and cannot base his action upon a wise 
selection, he is not fit to be at large. And it is not unknown, 
either to the childhood of the individual, or to that of the race, 
that the senses have to do with appearances. The beginnings 
of a philosophy of knowledge are, thus, in the very hand of 
every man not too heedless to be capable of attention or too 
ingrained a dogmatist to tolerate a doubt. 

As early as the fifth century before Christ, Parmenides of 
Elea is inspired with a contempt for appearances, and treats 
with severity the men who are so misguided as to trust to the 
illusory reports of the senses. Between Being, the really 
existent, and the empty semblance which displays itself before 
the sense, he draws a sharp distinction. Things seem to us 
manifold and changing, but these manifold and changing 
things belong to the deceptive world of appearance. True 
being is one and changeless, and can be known only by thought. 
Zeno steps nimbly to the side of Parmenides, and deals our 



The Problem of Everybody s World 19 

faltering faith in the things that seem to be a crushing blow 
with ingenious arguments, now for many centuries the delight 
of those who love puzzles and paradoxes — the point that 
cannot move in infinitely divisible space, because it cannot find, 
in such, any space small enough to begin with ; Achilles, vainly 
endeavoring to find the end of the endless series of diminishing 
distances that separate him from the slowly moving tortoise. 

Whatever we may have to say as to the cogency of the argu- 
ments of Zeno, their moral is plain. If the world of appear- 
ances is so bad that things and their motions annihilate them- 
selves by sheer force of their own inconceivability, then, by all 
means, let us withdraw our respect from such a world, and let 
us set our affections on another. 

These Eleatics seem, however, to have overshot their mark. 
The problem set for mankind is to find a world in or through 
appearances. The philosopher who throws away all appear- 
ances, and who presents us with a world out of his own head, 
suggests to us the conjurer, who covers his table with incredible 
things drawn from a hat. He who goes so far as to say that the 
senses always deceive us gives us no shadow of a reason why 
some appearances should be, as they manifestly are, preferred 
before others. He does not explain to us the difference between 
perceiving things well, perceiving them ill, and not perceiving 
them at all. The "real existence," which he venerates, simply 
hibernates in some secret recess of its own; it does not lift 
its finger to present us with this appearance or with that. The 
universe of those who thus deal with being is a split pea, the 
halves of which have lost each other. That is to say, it is not 
a universe. 

From Parmenides on, there is a stately procession of those 
who have felt impelled to try a fall with the problem of appear- 
ance and reality. Some have taken the matter lightly, some 
with desperate seriousness. Granted a lively sense of the need 
of drawing the distinction, and granted also a somewhat higher 



20 The World We Live In 

respect for the facts revealed in our common experience than 
was possessed by the devotees of abstract thought criticized 
above, it was inevitable that another theory should emerge. 
Empedocles set up his hypothesis of "effluxes" from objects 
entering into "pores" adapted to them, and giving rise to our 
sensations. We have here in a crude form the common sense 
doctrine that physical things act upon us and we know them. 
This common sense doctrine has, on the whole, held its own 
through the ages, and it is accepted by the man who touches us 
with his elbow to-day. It has been criticized in past centuries 
very much as it is still criticized in our philosophical journals ; 
but men have gone on believing it in spite of criticism,which, 
by the way, seems rarely to be fatal to a philosophical position 
of any sort. 

The doctrine strikes men as, if not wholly satisfactory, at 
least not without something to recommend it. In the first 
place, it is vague, and says little, except when taken up and 
spun out into details by some philosopher. In the second place, 
it does seem to be a way of accounting for appearances. 

To be sure, there are, as has been indicated earlier in this 
chapter, difficulties enough in the path of the man who cares to 
consider difficulties. Our common experience suggests that 
our senses have their limitations. We are not surprised to find 
Anaxagoras teaching that they are too weak to discern the 
ultimate constituents of things; nor to hear the Atomists, 
who elaborated the theory of material images emitted by objects 
and reaching the mind, admit that perception is not wholly 
veracious. If a man goes as far as this, how can he, in good 
conscience, refuse to go to the end of the road with the Sophist ? 
Things are not appearances ; we have only appearances, never 
the things ; the appearances are related to our senses and hence 
constitute a truth all our own. This is our truth, our world ; 
let the unknown and hypothetical beyond shift for itself ; to 
us, it is nothing. 



The Problem of Everybody s World 21 

Man, said Protagoras, is the measure of all things. Since 
his day, others have walled themselves up in this same thought, 
dying to the world logically, if not actually. That enfant 
terrible, Gorgias, with his, "nothing exists; if anything did 
exist, we could not know it," and the rest, seems furiously 
determined to reject every universe that he cannot wholly 
possess and break in pieces at his pleasure. The world of his 
seemings is enough for him — in his professional capacity, of 
course. Aristippus, a more reasonable creature, cautiously 
asserts that we can know only our sensations, not what causes 
them. 

If we take this turning, we are reduced to appearances ; we 
have lost the things, and with them the explanation of appear- 
ances that they are supposed to furnish. To say things are, 
but we can never know what they are, is as bad as saying that 
they are not. They are lost to us, in any case; they mean 
nothing. One cannot base a theory of the hereditary transmis- 
sion of mental and physical traits on the vague information that 
everybody has parents but nobody's ancestors can be identified. 
It has not pleased men generally to take this turning. 

It did not please Plato, who, while maintaining the existence 
of the supersensuous world of higher realities with which we 
associate his name, nevertheless thought fit to accept a physical 
world of things acting upon the senses and giving rise to appear- 
ances. The knowledge of such things he regards as "opinion" 
rather than knowledge; but he could not repudiate it alto- 
gether, and he stands as one of the champions of the Em- 
pedoclean doctrine. 1 

Nor did that wonderful man, Aristotle, incline to follow the 
seductive lead of the Sophist. He was too much the man of 
science for that — too conscious that there is a world which we 
know and the insistent features of which we are not at liberty 
to deny. To him, the thing existed before it made an impression 
on the organ of sense ; it set in motion this or that medium and, 



22 The World We Live In 

through it, stimulated the organ to a reaction ; with this reaction 
there arose sensation. How did he distinguish between the 
sensation and its object ? Not precisely as did those who pre- 
ceded him. That which is and that which is perceived are, in a 
sense, one, and yet they are distinguishable ; the object com- 
municates to the sense organ its "form," not its "matter," 
and thus comes to be perceived as it is. 2 

In centuries to follow the authority of Aristotle was to play a 
role of enormous importance. So penetrated was he with the 
conviction that physical motions exist and are to be regarded as 
the antecedents of sensation, that he could not seriously ask, 
with Protagoras, whether our knowledge is not determined by 
the character of our sense organs and limited to what is given 
in the sense. He shrewdly points out that, if everything is 
sensation, nothing is sensation, for there is no such thing as an 
organ of sense ; and he dismisses the doubt of the skeptic to 
the company of such idle questions as whether we are now asleep 
or awake. 3 

Nevertheless, with all his acuteness, Aristotle did not really 
furnish a solution of the difficulties which had teased men be- 
fore. After his time, men came back to them. The Stoic dis- 
tinguished sharply between the thing and the mental impression 
made by the thing. He affirmed dogmatically that percepts 
testify to the existence of their objects, but even he was forced 
to admit that the testimony of this or that psychical witness 
might be called in question. 4 Epicurus, with easy-going good 
nature, declared true even the hallucinations of the insane, 
and dreams, on the ground that they produce an impression, 
which the nonexistent could not do. 5 Such a generous treat- 
ment of appearances, if uncorrected, can only embarrass the man 
who is in search of external realities to explain appearances. 

Then there come the schools of the Skeptics, of the men to 
whom the problem of the world does not seem to find its satis- 
factory solution in dogmatic affirmation. Appearances they 



The Problem of Everybody s World 23 

are willing to admit ; the realities that correspond to them they 
seek in vain. Are not different creatures, they argue, endowed 
with different kinds of sense organs ? The resulting impressions 
made by objects must be different. Who will venture to say 
what an object is really like ? And men differ from each other, 
and the various senses of man differ from one another. Where 
is our reliable witness, and by what mark is he known ? 6 

The naive references made by the ancient skeptic to the 
peculiarities of the Arabian Phcenix, of worms, of the hungry 
goat, of the steward of Alexander, and of Andron the Argive, 
who did not drink, may elicit a smile. All sorts of considerations 
are poured upon us, as might be expected from men rather 
unsystematically supporting the thesis of the relativity of all 
knowledge. But quite enough is said to make us realize that 
we are in the presence of a real problem, and a very modern one. 
We do not furnish a solution of that problem in pointing out, as 
did Aristotle, that the skeptic is inconsistent. 

Of course the skeptic is inconsistent, whether he be Protag- 
oras or Pyrrho, Aristippus or Agrippa. He is inconsistent in 
theory, and he is inconsistent in practice. He has no right to 
talk of objects, sense organs, and resulting impressions, as if 
they existed and were open to inspection, and then to deny a 
knowledge of all save impressions. And having told us that we 
know nothing, he has no right to conduct himself with propri- 
ety and prudence, as though he knew a great deal. The Pyr- 
rhonic abstension from judgment is a bit of pompous pretense, 
an attitude to be taken in the pulpit, and to be abandoned 
incontinently when one appears in the street. 

But it is one thing to point out that the skeptic is inconsist- 
ent and another to point out what may reasonably be substi- 
tuted for his philosophy of negation. If we content ourselves 
with the conviction that we know things "somehow" through 
our sensations and ideas, we have parted company with the 
philosophers. We are again placid citizens of Everybody's 



24 The World We Live In 

World, for whom problems do not exist, simply because they 
are ignored. 

Truly, it seems as though, for the thinker, the misfortune of 
having a body is second only to that of having none. He who 
has a body has senses ; he rises every morning to his game of 
hide and seek with the things that conceal themselves in ap- 
pearances or behind them ; the distinction of subjective and ob- 
jective, psychical and physical, haunts him like an unpaid debt. 

Even an unpaid debt, however, becomes not intolerable to the 
man who has more serious concerns to occupy him. With the 
passing of the pagan schools, the philosopher became first of 
all a theologian. He was inclined, in so far as he doubted at 
all, to doubt, "without sin, of things to be believed," as did 
Augustine. To men of this temper, the problem of Everybody's 
World becomes a less absorbing one. Augustine knew very well 
what might be said in favor of skepticism ; he gave the prefer- 
ence to the psychical, making material things objects of faith. 
But he did not seriously doubt what he seemed to perceive 
about him. 7 And during the centuries in which the medieval 
church philosophy was growing and ripening, a period the philo- 
sophical thinking of which was largely controlled by Aristo- 
telian conceptions, men were content with the doctrine of 
"forms" impressed by objects upon the senses — representa- 
tives testifying to the things which give rise to them. 8 

But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there arose a 
bolder spirit of criticism. Thus, William of Occam maintains 
that our internal states are more certain than sense-perception. 
Percepts he regards as signs of things rather than copies, as smoke 
may be a sign of fire without resembling it. 9 We cannot, 
suggests Pierre d'Ailly, be deceived as to our own existence, but 
it is conceivable that our belief in external objects is erroneous. 
Could not God, by his almighty power, give us the same sensa- 
tions if there were no external objects ? 10 

One is tempted to ask this champion of the superior cer- 



The Problem of Everybody s World 25 

tainty of our internal states what becomes of the inside of a 
hat when the outside has, by almighty power, been annihilated ? 
Is it still the inside of a hat ? And what can I mean by my 
sensations, if I deny senses and objects affecting them ? What 
marks a sensation as such? Where does it get its name? 
The skeptic manifestly does not take away enough. He robs a 
man of his wealth, and leaves him still rich, or, at any rate, 
possessed of unlimited credit. If he will avoid inconsistency, 
let him take away all or none ; this eating cake and keeping it 
is no proper occupation for a philosopher. Nevertheless, it has 
busied the skeptic from a very early time, and there are those 
who are not willing to desist even in our day. 

We have seen how our problem has come down through the 
ages to the modern man. Something seems to be lacking in 
the solutions offered us. Everybody's World appears, it al- 
ways has appeared, to the man in the street, to be a world di- 
rectly revealed in perception. Are we not all the man in the 
street, when we leave our study or our lecture room ? We 
live in a world ; we do not merely speculate about it. By 
the philosophers this world has been pushed away, thrust out of 
sight, made a party to correspond with through a medium, not 
an acquaintance whom we meet face to face. What is granted 
us is not a vision, but a reflection ; not a voice, but an echo — 
and there is always the haunting suspicion that behind the re- 
flection, the echo, there may be nothing at all or nothing that 
means anything to us. 

Some problems cease to be such with the increase of human 
knowledge in the field of the special sciences. For their solu- 
tion or their dismissal what we need is information. Thus, the 
question, whether the Skiopodes, who occasioned theological 
perplexities to Augustine, are or are not to be accounted as men, 
falls of itself when it is discovered that those one-legged 
eccentricities never existed. But the problem of reflection with 
which we have been concerned does not belong to this class. 



26 The World We Live In 

In the seventeenth century more was known of the signifi- 
cance of brain and nerves than was known earlier. Never- 
theless, that acute and original genius Descartes stood just where 
Pierre d'Ailly had stood two centuries before. He could 
put the soul into the pineal gland, and could explain the mecha- 
nism of the body by which the impressions made by external 
things are conducted to the brain. But this is physiological 
knowledge, and assumes the existence of an outer world which 
still remains to him problematic. He followed an ancient tradi- 
tion and shut himself up to images, copies, ideas ; how prove 
that anything exists beyond this barrier, impenetrable to him ? 
The skeptic might talk to him precisely as he might have talked 
to Empedocles, and the advance of science could not put into his 
hand a single weapon to help him to repel the attack. He is 
reduced to maintaining that God helps those who cannot 
possibly help themselves, and, as He is benevolently unwilling 
to deceive us into thinking that there is an external world 
when there is none, one must really exist. 11 Thus, Descartes 
assumes a duplicate world, a world unseen, unfelt, present to the 
mind only by proxy ; a world which we have never had, and 
never can have, in itself ; a world cut off from observation and 
verification, the doubtful conclusion, as it seems to us now, of a 
dubious bit of deductive reasoning from absurd premises. John 
Locke, to whom the British philosophy owes so much, felt the 
push of the same tradition. He, too, shut himself up to ideas, 
and put the things represented by them at one remove. He is, 
however, less of a scholastic than Descartes, and his robust 
common sense carries with it a flavor of the ancient dogmatism. 12 

It would be absurd to maintain that two such sensible men 
as Descartes and Locke fully realized how completely they had 
banished the material world, how absolutely they had lost it. 
They were influenced, on the one hand, by a venerable tradi- 
tion, according to which things psychical are known more 
immediately and more intimately than are other things. But 



The Problem of Everybody s World 27 

they were influenced no less by the perennial problem which con- 
fronts us all, the problem of finding a world of things in appear- 
ances, and, thus, of assigning to appearances their place in the 
world. If, under the former influence, they were betrayed into 
seeking their things rather behind appearances than in them ; 
yet, under the latter, they were induced to retrace their steps, 
and to recognize the things we see and touch to be originals and 
not mere copies. There is abundant evidence in their works to 
prove that they were saved by this conservative instinct from 
shipwreck upon the rock of consistency. 13 

Since their time it has been so much the fashion in philo- 
sophic circles to assume that things psychical are known with a 
peculiar intimacy and immediacy, that one feels almost com- 
pelled to apologize for defending any other form of doctrine. 
Some have not fallen in with the fashion, it is true ; but, among 
philosophers by profession, these may be regarded as, on the 
whole, exceptions. Certain writers who profess not to follow 
the fashion can be seen, when we scan attentively the cut of 
their garments, to have been more affected by it than they sup- 
pose. Many have accepted the duplicate world, the world at 
one remove. To what are such men committed ? 

Remember that, to those who take their doctrine seriously, 
there is no peep-hole in the curtain. Whether the duplicate 
world exists at all or is a mere fiction cannot be decided by an 
appeal to direct inspection. Nor may we anywhere have re- 
course to observation, to immediate observation, when we ad- 
dress ourselves to the task of telling what the things in the dupli- 
cate world are like. Everywhere we are shut up to an infer- 
ence from appearances. 

Shall we assume that the things inferred are precisely like 
the things we perceive? that the latter are true copies? 
But the things we perceive appear, as we have seen, under a 
variety of guises. Which one of these can be proved to be the 
true copy of the original and only external thing ? As early as 



28 The World We Live In 

the fifth century before Christ men felt impelled to conclude that 
things cannot be precisely like what seem to present them- 
selves as things. Like Locke, they granted the things only cer- 
tain of the properties given in our experience, and made the rest 
subjective effects of what is external, signs, if you please, but 
not copies. 14 To stop with this seems arbitrary. If what is 
really not colored can cause me to perceive color, how can I be 
sure that what is not extended may not cause me to perceive 
extended things ? He who asks such questions makes a very 
grave assault upon the duplicate world, and I turn a deaf ear to 
him for the moment. Let us first ask something else that does 
not seem impertinent to the problem of the duplicate world, 
still recognizable as a world, if a washed-out one. 

Remember that there is no peep-hole in the curtain. How, 
then, shall we answer one who asks us : Where are the things in 
this duplicate world? What is their distance and direction 
from the things that we seem to perceive ? Can we point to a 
single one of them and feel sure that we are pointing in the right 
direction? The finger with which we point, the direction in 
which we point, belong to the world of our perceptions, not to 
its double. And when do occurrences take place in this realm of 
the merely inferred ? Dates, to be dates, must have a meaning ; 
and I cannot find any meaning for my " when," if I abandon the 
world of my experience for an unknown. How in the world is 
anything in this duplicate world related to the things I see, or 
hear, or touch ? How can it beget such experiences ? To such 
questions no answer appears to be forthcoming. 

It has seemed to some that we make less troublesome such 
perplexing questions as these, if we muffle the voice that asks 
them, to such a degree that it becomes no longer recognizable 
as a voice asking a definite question. How easy to describe a 
landscape which has melted, with the shades of night, into the 
invisible. And how easy to satisfy the questioner who is con- 
tent to be put off with a murmur which need bear no semblance 



The Problem of Everybody s World 29 

to articulate speech. The train of reflection that led men to 
maintain that the real things without us are not precisely like 
what we perceive need only be carried a little farther to dissolve 
our collection of duplicates into a something or nothing that has 
lost all semblance to a world of any sort. 

If the whole world of our experience is a vain show, is a veil 
that divides us from reality, how can we, admitting that there is 
such a reality, ever know even remotely what it is like, what it 
does, how it does it ? The only logical answer seems to be that 
we cannot know, and that it is a mistake to conceive of this 
reality as a world of things at all. If we can persuade ourselves, 
as did Herbert Spencer, that there is a certain impiety in want- 
ing to know anything about it, so much the better for our peace 
of mind — we are enabled to lay a soothing plaster over the 
ache of our ignorance. Those who treat the duplicate world 
in this way demolish it, it is true ; but they preserve its 
shadow. They retain a something which is supposed to fulfill 
some of the functions that the natural man attributes to a world 
of things. Their featureless surrogate for an external world 
proclaims them with its half-obliterated tongue to be of the 
party of the ancient skeptics. 

I shall not criticize at length this ghost of a duplicate world, 
which so many of our countrymen associate with the name of the 
remarkable man mentioned just above. I shall merely remind 
my reader that what is vague enough to serve as an answer to 
every question is really an answer to no question. With what 
emotions should we contemplate the man who coupled every 
definite answer to a definite question with the wearisome 
refrain, "but the Unknowable is the ultimate cause of the 
transaction." After a few repetitions, we should exclaim, 
" Spare us the refrain ; give us only the first half of the answer." 

The last half is manifestly a survival, without functional sig- 
nificance ; an appendix, which can do nothing for us, but may 
cause embarrassment, and were better amputated. Histori- 



2,o The World We Live In 

cally it is interesting. It is a by-product of the very natural 
attempt which men have made to explain appearances by having 
recourse to things. The turn taken by the argument has resulted 
in the loss of the things sought for, and hence in the shipwreck 
of this particular attempt at explanation. 

Having referred to Spencer, it seems only just that I should 
make a passing reference to Kant, from whom Spencer indi- 
rectly got his doctrine. The German philosopher applied to 
Ins Unknowable the somewhat unhappy expression "things-in- 
themselves," which would suggest to us that the duplicate world 
was retained, in its most general features, at least. But the 
suggestion is misleading. Kant's " things-in- themselves " are 
not in space ; they are not in time ; they bear no conceivable 
relation to what we perceive or can perceive ; they cannot do 
anything ; they cannot, in any intelligible sense of the words, 
even he anything. Kant's immediate successors made haste to 
repudiate them ; and many of his warmest admirers have la- 
bored to prove that he himself set no store by them, after all. 

Nevertheless, the " thing-in-itself " is a child of Kant. It 
is an illegitimate child; and when Kant is, as I think, at 
his best, he seems ashamed of the paternity, treating the 
creature as a mere negative conception, a something as good 
as nothing. Yet we must admit that this reluctantly acknowl- 
edged brat was the Cordelia on whom he depended for the com- 
forts of his old age — God, Freedom, and Immortality. These 
he got, in his "Critique of the Practical Reason," by granting 
his theoretical nonentity enough of a practical being to exist 
and to have some significance. The proper place, however, 
for " things-in- themselves " is evidently not a duplicate world, 
but the desert left by its demolition. They are treated with 
extreme rigor, being denied every single property by which a 
thing can be known as a thing. 

It is with some diffidence that I speak of Kant, for the Kantian 
literature is piled up mountains high, and a cough can dis- 



The Problem of Everybody s World 31 

lodge an avalanche. But I intend to come back to this won- 
derful man later ; and I hope to show that, in spite of the 
burden of tradition that weighted his sturdy little shoulders, 
he hit with remarkable sagacity upon the path which we must 
follow if we would arrive at a reasonable solution of the problem 
of Everybody's World. He did not follow that path up to the 
end, nor did he prevent our wandering from it, by setting up 
guide posts at every parting of the ways. Still, he made it 
possible for us to set our faces in the right direction. 

We have had recently in our philosophical journals a good 
deal of sharp criticism directed against the "copy" theory of 
truth. The history of speculative thought seems to show 
that such criticism is abundantly justified. The problem of 
the world of common knowledge demands some better solution. 
It is well to bear in mind, however, that, if it is a misfortune to 
make shipwreck on the Scylla of a duplicate world which we can 
never know, it is no less a misfortune to be engulfed in the 
Charybdis of no real world at all, to sink in the chaos of ap- 
pearances. The problem of Everybody's World is not how to 
get two worlds ; it is not how to dispense with any ; it is how to 
find our world in the appearances in which it is evident that 
men really do somehow lay hold of it. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WORLD AS IDEA 

We do a grievous wrong to the independent genius of that 
most original thinker Berkeley, if we confuse his bold solution 
of the world-problem with the efforts of any of his predecessors. 
The problem which confronted him was, of course, the same as 
that which stared them in the face. It is the same that chal- 
lenges our curiosity and enchains our interest. Everybody's 
World existed for the ancient Greek and for the medieval 
Churchman as it exists for the modern American or European. 
There it stood with all its seeming inconsistency, as it stands 
now ; unmistakably there, but enshrouded in obscurity, half- 
revealed, making a mock of men's efforts at reflection, beckon- 
ing them on to draw aside the veil and to shed the light of day 
upon the mystery of its being. 

Spontaneous generation has yet to be established by the man 
of science. Of the spontaneous generation of the philosopher 
we need take no account at all. A Kant or a Hegel who should 
start up unannounced on the banks of the Congo or on the up- 
lands of Thibet would be a lusus naturce, a philosophic mon- 
strosity; either a thing to dismiss at once with those whose 
heads do grow beneath their shoulders, or a creature to be 
recognized as a clever fraud. There are no Melchisedecs in 
philosophy. This does not mean that there is no such thing 
as originality ; but it does mean that philosophical systems 
have some relation to the culture of their time ; they are the 
natural fruit of some particular tree, and no theory of mutation 
justifies us in planting thistle seeds if we seek to have figs. 

But the acute realization of this truth may lead us into error. 
32 



The World as Idea 33 

Every thinking man has his world-problem laid before him by 
his own experience, and he has whatever suggestions toward its 
solution he may gather from his contemporaries or his prede- 
cessors. It is of the utmost importance to distinguish what 
really has been his contribution to speculative thought, and to 
estimate its significance in the light of the influences which are 
known to have surrounded him. If, however, we scan anx- 
iously the pages of the history of philosophy, and rinding 
somewhere in it some doctrine that bears a remote analogy 
to the utterances of our philosopher, or, worse yet, some doc- 
trine which, though very different, has by an historical acci- 
dent had attached to it the same or a similar name — if, I 
say, happening upon such, we thereby regard ourselves as on 
the track of an affinity and an important explanation, we betray 
a dullness of comprehension that cannot be redeemed by learn- 
ing. 

I say all this because certain persons, who use the word "ideal- 
ism" with a generous vagueness that makes it almost useless as 
the designation of anything in particular, are very apt to hark 
back from Berkeley to Plato, to connect the doctrines of the two 
men, and to rob Berkeley of his just due. 

It is quite true that Plato discoursed of a world of "Ideas," 
of certain supersensible realities which suggest to one the pat- 
terns shown to Moses in the mount. But those who know 
Plato best * recognize that this realm of "Ideas" bears a much 
closer resemblance to the Parmenidean "Being," cut off, as 
we have seen in the last chapter, from the sphere of our percep- 
tions, than it does to what Berkeley calls ideas. The Platonic 
"Ideas" are nothing psychical; they are not in the human 
mind ; they are not in the Divine Mind ; they are something 
which we can here leave out of account. 1 

In his later life, and when he wrote his curious book on the 
Virtues of Tar-water, that universal remedy which the world 
had so long sought, Berkeley was influenced, I think, to his 



34 The World We Live In 

detriment; by Plato. But when his youthful genius first 
spread its daring wing, and broke with a long tradition, it 
began its flight precisely where it found itself at the beginning 
of the eighteenth century. Had Berkeley done no more than 
serve up to us a warmed-over dish of broken meats taken from 
the upper shelves of the Platonic or Neo-Platonic cupboard, 
he would never have held in the history of philosophy the honor- 
able place which is his own to-day. 

The world — the world as distinguished from our percep- 
tions of the world — had been pushed out of sight and as good 
as lost. It was represented in experience only by certain 
proxies, by ideas. The word "idea" John Locke had defined 2 
as "whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man 
thinks." Taken literally, this would imply that a man can- 
not even think about things as distinguished from ideas, but 
Locke was no extremist. To him the ideas alone were known 
immediately, but some ideas represented things. The things 
were the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth ; the ideas 
were in the mind, copies or indications of things, conveyed 
through the portals of sense. It was upon this food that Berke- 
ley's early years were nourished. 

It is the prerogative of the man of genius to see what lies 
plainly before us all and yet remains invisible. Berkeley was 
not overburdened by learning and he was not a slave to tradi- 
tion. He simply opened his eyes and saw what men might 
have seen long before, namely, that a duplicate world of any 
sort so wholly cut off from observation cannot possibly be a 
world for us. It is no more than the shadow cast upon the void 
by the world we have. It is a hypothetical shadow, a prepos- 
terous shadow, one which cannot be proved to exist, and which 
must be assumed without a shade of a reason. 

Accordingly, he threw away this duplicate world. He did not 
merely blur it, rob it of light and color, obliterate its contours, 
and blow sentimental sighs with the skeptic over the fact that 



The World as Idea 35 

we cannot know what it is. He cheerfully tossed it away, and 
then told men that he had thrown away nothing at all, as there 
really had been nothing to throw. Appearances remained ; 
appearances, which he had been taught to call ideas. In these 
he claimed to have the only world that there had ever been. 
To be sure, these appearances, to exist at all, must exist in 
some mind. Where else than in a mind can an idea exist ? 

"It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst 
men," he writes, 3 "that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a 
word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, 
distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, 
with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this prin- 
ciple may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find 
in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive 
it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore- 
mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense ? and 
what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ? and 
is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any com- 
bination of them, should exist unperceived ? " 

The doctrine was a lightning flash, an electric shock, a 
revolution. The dwellers on the slopes of Vesuvius were not 
the less surprised at the catastrophe which made of Hercu- 
laneum and Pompeii a pillar of salt, from the fact that the 
mountain had already given them warnings. Men can go 
about indefinitely with premises in their heads, and, never- 
theless, avoid precipitating the conclusion which they hold in 
solution. But some day there comes a jar, and the thing is 
done ; we stand open-mouthed before the consequences of our 
own thought. 

Had not the world admitted for centuries that the things 
we directly and immediately perceive are sensations, mental 
images, forms, something which, in the lump, the modern 
man would call psychical and designate as subjective ? Had 
not all else become the doubtful result of a questionable infer- 



36 The World We Live In 

ence ? Did it ever occur to any one that sensations or ideas 
could walk off and set up for themselves independently of the 
mind in which they sprang into being? What becomes of a 
pain when no one feels it ? What becomes of a percept when 
no one is perceiving ? As well abstract the cat and keep the 
smile, as grant to ideas such an existence as men had hitherto 
misguidedly attributed to houses, mountains, and rivers ! 

Berkeley met the men of his day on their own ground, and 
seemed to leave them without such weapons as a philosopher 
may deign to use. Dogmatic affirmation, misconception, and 
ridicule are for the vulgar ; though it must be confessed that the 
learned have been known to handle such bludgeons. The dog- 
matist continued to affirm that the duplicate world hung sus- 
pended in the meaningless "beyond." The chorus raised its 
protesting voice : Was ever the like heard of ? do we eat and 
drink ideas ? do we draw them on, and button them up, when 
we rise from our beds ? Bless the mark ! why not walk through 
a locked door, if it is only an idea ? 

The coolness with which Berkeley takes it for granted that 
other men should deal as remorselessly with tradition as did 
he is perfectly delicious. It is a great thing to be young, and 
to be possessed of that genius that gazes upon its own vision 
undeterred by the apprehensions of those who hoard maxims 
and bow down before the wisdom of the fathers. " Some truths 
there are," he tells us, 4 "so near and obvious to the mind that a 
man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this 
important one to be, namely, that all the choir of heaven and 
furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which com- 
pose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence 
without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known ; 
that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived 
by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created 
spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist 
in the mind of some Eternal Spirit — it being perfectly unin- 



The World as Idea t>7 

telligible ... to attribute to any single part of them an exist- 
ence independent of a spirit." 

Thus, according to the new doctrine, nothing can be said 
to exist save spirits and the ideas of those spirits. The step 
which had been taken was really the next step in philosophy. 
The only knowable world had already been turned into a world 
of spirits and of ideas ; nothing remained save to recognize that 
the knowable world is the world. 

One may be at liberty to reject both Berkeley's premises and 
his conclusion, but one is not at liberty, at this late date, to fall 
into the gross misunderstandings of which he has so constantly 
been the victim. He was preeminently a man of sense ; a 
man to discriminate most carefully between appearances and 
appearances, giving the preference to those which the expe- 
rience of mankind and the progress of knowledge have decided 
to hold in honor. His world of ideas is not a chaos. 

Whatever his right to do so, he accepts and emphasizes 
the common distinction between what is given in the sense and 
what is merely imagined. This distinction is one of the most 
striking features of Everybody's World. It is recognized by 
men of many schools and by men of none ; no man can consist- 
ently ignore it and survive. Berkeley finds two lands of ideas 
within the circle of his experiences. 5 He can excite certain 
ideas in his mind at his pleasure : "it is no more than willing, 
and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy ; and by the 
same power it is obliterated and makes way for another." 
But he realizes that the ideas " actually perceived by Sense" 
have not a like dependence on his will : "When in broad day- 
light I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I 
shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall 
present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the hear- 
ing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not 
creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or 
Spirit that produces them." 



38 The World We Live In 

To Berkeley both things imagined and things perceived are 
ideas, but it is clear that he recognizes different orders of ideas. 
The ideas of sense are strong, lively, distinct, and have a steadi- 
ness, order, and coherence lacking in the others. They are 
referred to organs of sense. We are told that they may properly 
be called real things, and ideas of imagination may, by contrast, 
be termed ideas or images of things. The established methods 
by which the Divine Mind excites the former in us are the laws 
of nature. 

But this is not all. Berkeley makes room in his philosophy 
for a further distinction which is also a most important feature 
of Everybody's World. 

I hear a faint and indistinguishable noise ; I see upon the 
horizon a dim and indefinite speck. I do not, in the one case, 
know what the noise means ; nor do I know, in the other, what 
kind of an object I am looking at. Both the Berkeleyan and 
the man who has no theory may feel sure that I am concerned 
here with sense and not with imagination. They may both 
say that I am having an experience of "things." But had I 
no better experience of things than this, my world would not 
be a world — things, definitely recognized to be such, would not 
exist for me. 

A coach comes rattling by, and I now know what was meant 
by that sound. The dimly discerned speck moves and changes, 
and I see a man with all his members. If I am asked to tell 
something about my world, to describe it, to what experiences 
shall I have recourse ? Do they all stand upon the same level ? 
Berkeley would never have become a bishop had he been capa- 
ble of saying: "Set a human being so far away from me that 
he becomes indistinguishable from an ant hill, and I will tell 
you what he is like." Our philosopher worked out with much 
ingenuity a doctrine of the relative values of appearances, point- 
ing out which should be taken as signs or indications, and which 
should be accounted as that which is signified by those signs ; 



The World as Idea 39 

nor did he overlook the fact that some signs are not as satis- 
factory as others. 6 

So far, then, Berkeley appears to have been very desirous 
of retaining those striking features of Everybody's World 
that seem vouched for by the common experience of man. Al- 
though he called all sorts of things ideas, he did not confuse 
a man imagined with a man seen, nor did he regard any and 
every sense-impression as an equally satisfactory presentation 
of a thing. How, then, did his new idealistic philosophy differ 
from the belief of all the world — I will not say, from the belief 
of the philosopher urging his scholastic doctrine of mental 
images and unperceived duplicate originals — but from the 
belief of men generally, including this same philosopher in his 
moments of relaxation and grown human ? Was Berkeley's 
idealism but a name ? 

The man himself thought that he was obliterating no feature 
of Everybody's World. 7 He did not mean to be "a setter-up 
of new notions." His object was "to unite, and place in a 
clearer light, that truth which was before shared between the 
vulgar and the philosophers." According to him, the former 
believe that those things they immediately perceive are the real 
things, and the latter maintain that the things immediately 
perceived are ideas, which exist only in the mind. Put these 
opinions together, and you have the whole truth. "The same 
Principles," we read, at the end of those charming dialogues in 
which the materialist is brought to change his heart of stone for 
an idea — "the same Principles, which, at first view, lead to 
Skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to 
Common Sense." 

Common Sense ! Never ! The plain man is no more a 
Berkeleyan than he is the Dalai-lama. Berkeley's orthodoxy 
reminds me of that of the learned German Orientalist who 
posed as the champion of old-fashioned theological conserva- 
tism. He shook his head over the free treatment accorded to 



4-0 The World We Live In 

the patriarchs by many of his colleagues. "They wish to 
prove," he complained to me, "that Abraham was little better 
than a fetish-worshiper. Now, I have proved conclusively 
that he was a worshiper of the sun and moon ; that is, an idol- 
ater of a really high order." 

There is a third feature of Everybody's World, one of no small 
importance, that Berkeley felt impelled to deny. Men gener- 
ally had attributed, as they still attribute, to physical things a 
certain continuous, independent, existence. No workman 
thinks that his tools are annihilated when he turns his back, or 
that they are preserved merely by the grace of God, and be- 
cause the Divine Eye is upon them. I cannot believe that my 
garret and my cellar spring into being alternately as I travel 
up and down the stair ; nor can I be persuaded that, to have a 
whole house at once, I must either turn theist, or distribute 
my family in the various rooms and beg my neighbors to watch 
the external walls and the chimneys. 

Should one here raise the protest that it is unbecoming to 
make sport of a man of undoubted genius and of noble charac- 
ter, I answer : I am not making sport of Berkeley, in the least. 
I love the man ; but I think it my duty to point out so clearly 
that there can be no misunderstanding in the matter the 
truth that his doctrine is not in harmony with common sense, 
and is not the doctrine of the man of science, except in a few in- 
stances in which the man of science has elected to try his luck 
as a metaphysician. For Berkeley the independence of the 
physical system of things does not exist — that system would 
be snuffed out with the last percipient, as the picture on the 
screen vanishes, when the light in the lantern is extinguished. 

How widely Berkeley's world differs from Everybody's 
World will appear more clearly in the next chapter. Here I 
wish to dwell upon certain momentous consequences which 
follow in the train of the new doctrine. 

Men are not influenced merely by the dry light of reason. 



The World as Idea 41 

We all have a tendency to believe what we like ; recently, there 
has been an exacerbation of activity among those who would 
persuade us that it is our pleasant duty to believe what we like. 
The doctrine of the World as Idea seemed to open up enchant- 
ing vistas. Idealism in its later as well as in its earlier forms 
has always appealed to the emotions quite as much as to the 
intellect ; the very name attracts us, and tends to disarm sus- 
picion. 

Literally for thousands of years men had been interested in 
the question of the existence and attributes of God, and in the 
problem of His relation to the world. Men had offered demon- 
strations of the existence of God, which convinced some per- 
sons for a while, but which became a stone of stumbling to oth- 
ers. There had been much talk of potentiality and Actuality, 
of contingent being and Necessary Being, of that whose essence 
does not imply existence, and of that whose very Nature includes 
Existence. The mass of mankind had paid little attention to 
such subtleties, but believed in God, moved by early training, 
religious feeling, and the one argument which impressed man 
long before Socrates and long after Berkeley — the argument 
which finds in the system of things as a whole something analo- 
gous to the evidences of mind revealed by human beings. 

In the passing of the old order, is the new philosophy com- 
pelled to content itself with the commonplace probable evidence 
which has always appealed to men generally? Can it do no 
more than hope, trust, and search anxiously for evidences of 
mind in the universe ? No ! it has found an irresistible weapon, 
a magic lance, which can unhorse at one thrust the grisly 
phantom of doubt. Is it not clear that nothing exists or can 
exist save spirits and their ideas ? To be at all, an idea must 
have its being in some spirit. As sure, then, as my papers exist 
when I have laid them away ; as sure as my chair stands here 
at midnight, God exists. 8 He must exist, or nothing would have 
any continuous existence ; and do we not all know that things 



42 The World We Live In 

do have a continuous existence ? It would be too absurd to 
believe the contrary. What would become of Nature ? 

Nor is this all. Ideas are only ideas ; minds can beget them 
and obliterate them; the ideas themselves can do nothing. 
They passively appear and disappear, as they are ordered up 
and dismissed. If, then, any change whatever takes place in 
ideas, it is due to the action of some mind. In most instances 
such changes cannot be attributed to the finite minds which we 
all unhesitatingly accept. We may, therefore, take the laws of 
nature, the orderly succession of the ideas of sense, to be the 
voice of God. We think His thoughts ; we share with Him the 
imagery in His Mind. 9 

It only remains to cap the edifice of the idealistic philosophy 
with the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. 10 
Whatever a spirit may be, it is not an idea, nor is it composed 
of such. Hence, the destruction of the body does not affect it. 

Berkeley's vision is gorgeous. To those feeling their way 
anxiously in a world foreign to them and full of uncertainties a 
light is gone up. Their dead and doubtful world has been 
transformed into a revelation of God ; £/id a revelation so im- 
mediate, implying a communion so intimate, that doubt and 
fear are banished — the restless soul finds itself at home, and is 
at rest. 

The vision is gorgeous. It seems a sunset splendor on which 
to feast the eyes. Can it last? or must it fade? Does it 
really rest upon the earth ? or will it tremble for a while before 
us, and then slowly pale into common cloud ? If we turn with 
our questions to the philosopher of our day, it is likely that he 
will say : "What you saw, when in the company of Berkeley, 
is not real just as you saw it." But he may add : "When it 
fades, however, we are not left to the contemplation of common 
cloud ; follow the lead of the modern idealist to yonder height, 
and look again." 

Berkeley has few faithful followers to-day, but the idealists 



The World as Idea 43 

are many. It may be asked why, in depicting the World as 
Idea, I have turned to him rather than to some one of those 
now living. 

The reason is, that his doctrine is really and unequivocally 
idealism. In his writings the word "idea" has not yet been 
disinfected, deodorized, freed from that unmistakable flavor of 
the subjective which gives its significance to the distinction 
drawn by the common man and the man of science between 
"ideas" and "things." For many centuries the philosophers 
had recognized the distinction and accepted both; Berkeley 
had kept the ideas and thrown away the things, but ideas meant 
to him much the same that they had meant to his predecessors. 
It was precisely the fact that they did retain this meaning that 
led him to deny certain characteristics of Everybody's World, 
and to conjure up the vision that stirs us to doubt and that com- 
pels our admiration. 

In many later idealists the sharp outlines of the doctrine have 
been rubbed away ; contrasts have been rendered less strik- 
ing. It is even possible to dispute over the question whether 
certain writers are idealists at all, and we refuse to be guided in 
our judgment by the name which it has pleased them to assume. 
Their idealism has grown old and stricken in words, and appears 
almost ready to be gathered to its fathers. It is true that even 
here we are apt to find something of the old emotional uplift, 
a trace of the enthusiasm which arises from the feeling that one 
is fighting in a good cause and is upholding the spirituality of 
things. But to the critical reader the ground for such an 
enthusiasm is not always apparent. The light has been fading 
from the enchanted palace ; much of the glow has left it. The 
mist of words and phrases through which we descry with diffi- 
culty the outlines of the dying splendor cannot prevent us from 
having occasional glimpses which lead us to believe that we are, 
after all, standing before common cloud. 

To the new idealism I shall return later in this book. Here 



44 Tlie World We Live hi 

we are concerned with the world-problem and its solution 
through the assumption that the World is Idea. We best 
further our aim by considering the aspect that our world takes 
on if we regard it as quite unequivocally idea. To Berkeley 
it was such more indisputably than to many of those who came 
after him. It is just, then, to begin with Berkeley. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE UNREALITY OF THE WORLD AS IDEA 

It is giving the physical world a bad name to call it Idea. 
If we mean nothing at all by the word, it is stupid to use it, 
for we only embarrass thereby our intercourse with our fellows. 
If we mean what general usage since the middle of the sixteenth 
century justifies us in meaning, we talk about the choir of 
heaven and furniture of the earth in a way that sensible men 
both learned and unlearned must regard as ill-advised and irre- 
sponsible. 

When we speak to-day, in the street, of sensations and ideas, 
we are not supposed to be making insignificant noises. It is 
assumed that we mean something, and if our words are used 
inappropriately, men are impelled to protest. Thus, he who 
would talk of eating and drinking ideas, taking sensations out of 
his purse, inserting an emotion into a keyhole, or heaping a 
platter with ripe reflections, would be regarded as either un- 
seasonably merry or the victim of nervous disorder. 

Passing from the street into the psychological laboratory, we 
find that reckless speech is frowned upon in just the same way. 
Certain things we may say about sensations and ideas, and 
certain things we may not say. It is accepted on all hands that 
we may not speak of things psychical as we naturally speak of 
things physical. The student ordered to set up the idea of his 
apparatus, and fetch from the shelf the percepts of colored disks, 
might not unnaturally expect his next task to be the gathering 
up with a dustbrush of valuable hints dropped by his professor 
during the last lecture. 

Now, it is not a whit less inappropriate to treat physical 
45 



46 The World We Live In 

things as psychical than it is to treat what is psychical as 
physical. If, on the street, I give a man a gold piece and tell 
him to put it away carefully in his mind, he assumes that I 
have presented him with both a coin and a jest. If, in the 
laboratory, I say : close your eyes, and turn that dynamometer 
into a memory-image ; put this speck under the microscope, and 
convert it into an insect ; that cork is too large, stand farther 
back from it and reduce its size; — if I ramble on in this 
fashion, it will be suspected that I have dined generously. 
Neither in common life nor in the sciences is it permissible 
to name things arbitrarily and to talk of them incoherently. 

To the philosopher more latitude is granted. So much of 
what he says is incomprehensible to most persons in any case, 
and the difficulties of reflective thought are admittedly so great, 
that men are, on the whole, disposed to excuse him for utter- 
ances which do not seem in harmony with good sense. He leads 
us into a new and unf amiliar world ; we hesitate to apply to 
what we find there the standard weights and measures to which 
we are accustomed. 

And yet, it does seem a doubtful compliment to the philos- 
opher to set him apart from other men, and to treat him as 
irresponsible, even out of deep respect. The old saying, "The 
king can do no wrong," carries with it a sting. It does not 
maintain that the king does right ; it makes of him a venerable 
and privileged outlaw. Since Berkeley's time, many philos- 
ophers have taken the liberty of talking as though houses, 
rivers, and mountains were something psychical ; and, as we 
have all gotten used to the doctrine, there is no great outcry 
against them, though the plain man goes on believing that 
they are not psychical, the man of science never dreams of 
treating them as though they were psychical, and an occa- 
sional philosopher raises his voice in protest. 

It may be objected that I wrong Berkeley and his succes- 
sors in classing them with those who confuse physical and psy- 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 47 

chical after the fashion illustrated above. There are those 
who assert strenuously that Berkeley meant by his ideas of 
sense precisely what men generally mean by physical things. 
I think enough has been said in the preceding chapter to prove 
that this is not the case, but the point is one of such importance 
that it is worth while to dwell upon it at some length. 

Let us, then, consider what sense-ideas did and did not mean 
to Berkeley. It is quite certain, to begin with, that he did not 
think of the things revealed to sight and touch as being little 
images in his head. To him the table on which he wrote was 
the table in his study ; it was in front of his body, not in it. 
His body was an idea, like the table ; and he would as soon 
have thought of putting his body into the table as of putting 
that bit of furniture into his body. The things he saw and felt 
did not shrivel up and change their places as soon as they were 
baptized "idea." 

Nevertheless, something did happen to them. They did 
not remain the "things" of common thought and of science. 
They were seen under a new aspect, revealed in a novel charac- 
ter. It was not mere accident that they were called ideas. 
The name was given to them because Berkeley believed that he 
had made a discovery of no small significance touching their 
real nature. The traditional sense of such words as "idea" 
and "sensation" makes them subjective phenomena, a some- 
thing referred to this or that disposition of our body ; a spark 
struck out when our body is acted on by other bodies, or the 
after-image, so to speak, of such a spark — a something inter- 
mittent, coming and going as it is begotten of the passing mo- 
ment or annihilated with it. It was believed in Berkeley's 
day, as it is believed in ours, that our bodies and the other 
bodies which act upon it stand in sharp contrast to such fugitive 
and merely representative existences. 

Berkeley obliterates this distinction. He does not turn 
ideas into things, but he does turn things into ideas ; that is to 



48 The World We Live In 

say, he thinks and speaks of the physical as though it were some- 
thing psychical. The houses, mountains, and rivers that he 
calls ideas he conceives to be "imprinted on the sense." 1 

Would any man in the street, would any man in the labora- 
tory, ever speak of a mountain as "imprinted on the sense"? 
He might speak of it as imprinting something, but surely he 
would not think of it as the impression. Berkeley has given 
up the time-honored attempt to explain appearances by the 
action of objects upon the organ of sense, and the coming into 
being of corresponding ideas; but he has not given it up 
utterly and wholly. If he had done so, he would not have 
talked of "impressions" at all, and he would not have called 
material things "ideas." His material things are transformed; 
they really have the ear-marks of old-fashioned ideas. 

We see this clearly in the denial of the independent existence 
of physical things discussed in the last chapter. It is argued 
that such objects are only ideas, and, hence, their very existence 
must depend on their being perceived. How seriously Berke- 
ley took this appears from his answer to the objection that, on 
his principles, things are at every moment annihilated and 
created anew. 2 Had he not unequivocally turned things into 
ideas, and robbed them of the character attributed to them by 
his predecessors and by most of us at the present day, it would 
have been easy for him to say: "Things are not annihilated 
and created anew ; they disappear when we close our eyes, and 
when we open them, they appear again. There is all the differ- 
ence in the world between disappearance and annihilation." 
He could then have tried to make clear what is meant by the 
existence of a physical thing as distinguished from its being 
perceived, and to show in what sense things are independent of 
perception. This cannot be a hopeless task, for men draw 
the distinction every day, and both in common life and in 
science profitable use is made of it. 

But Berkeley could not do this. He is reduced to bom- 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 49 

barding his opponent with a curious assortment of answers 
better calculated to silence him than to convince him. Thus, 
the objector is informed that, since to exist has no other mean- 
ing than to be perceived, it is not reasonable for him ' ' to stand 
up in defense of he knows not what." He is told that even 
those who believe in a world of things distinct from ideas 
admit that light and colors, and, hence, what is immediately 
perceived by sight, can only exist so long as the sensations are 
perceived. It is pointed out that the Schoolmen, who ac- 
cepted a material world, made it so dependent on God, that 
they conceived of its existence as a continual creation. It is 
insisted that even the "materialists" do not believe that what 
exists outside the mind is identical with what we immediately 
perceive, and ought, therefore, to admit that what we per- 
ceive by sense exists only in the mind. So far, the conclusion 
indicated seems to be, that it would be nothing to make a 
coil about even if things were constantly annihilated and 
re-created. 

This is clever. We are reduced to a condition of becoming 
humility, and brought to that frame of mind in which we would 
gladly accept a continuously existent world of any sort. 
When he has us on our knees, Berkeley offers us one. "Wher- 
ever bodies are said to have no existence without the mind," 
he explains to us, "I would not be understood to mean this or 
that particular mind, but all minds whatsoever. It does not 
therefore follow from the foregoing principles that bodies 
are annihilated and created every moment, or exist not at all 
during the intervals between our perception of them." 

The enormity of Berkeley's offense against the external world 
impresses us more and more as we reflect upon it. What a 
beggarly continuity of existence is that which he offers us ! 
The first shock experienced upon hearing that physical things 
are ideas, a shock from which we had begun to recover on 
being assured that nothing real is banished out of nature, is 



50 The World We Live In 

followed by a second quite as severe, when we realize that he 
means by bodies nothing more than the percepts existing in 
some mind or other, or the copies of such in the imagination. 

Let us put the matter to the test in a concrete instance. I 
am sitting at my table, and my friend is seated in the easy- 
chair on the other side of it. I have occasion to go into the 
next room to get a book. Is it sober good sense to believe that 
he can hold my table down for me, during my absence, and can 
give it a continuous existence ? Remember that, by hypothe- 
sis, the table, as distinct from his percept and mine, and the 
percepts of other possible sentient beings, does not exist. What 
is "imprinted on the sense," in his case, is not identical with 
what is "imprinted on the sense" so far as I am concerned. 
He may hold on to his percept, but he never had mine, and he 
cannot hold on to that. In common speech we say " the table " 
as though there were no difference between his experience and 
mine ; but that is because we accept the distinction current 
in Everybody's World between the table and our percepts or 
ideas of the table. Let us drop the distinction, in the spirit of 
the new philosophy, and let us consistently keep to ideas. Are 
we to assume that any percept of a table enjoyed by any single 
percipient creature can give continuous existence of some sort 
to all conceivable experiences of a table which may be enjoyed 
by all possible animated beings ? This seems arbitrary in the 
extreme. Moreover, what is this talk of handing ideas about, 
as if they were specie taken out of one pocket and dropped into 
another? Is it not abhorrent to nature to speak of com- 
mitting my ideas to the safekeeping of an acquaintance when I 
am too much occupied to keep an eye on them myself ? 

We are not concerned only with a question of verbal usage. 
The popular outcry against Berkeley was not without its rela- 
tive justification. No man seriously believes that the con- 
tinuous existence of my table is assured, if I will but induce 
my friend to remain in my room until I return to it. We are 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 51 

convinced that his seeing the table adds nothing to its real 
existence ; we feel sure that his closing his eyes detracts nothing 
from it. We mean by the table and its real existence something 
else than the sporadic appearance, in this or that mind, of this 
or that percept, and the continued existence, in one conscious- 
ness, of an idea, when some corresponding idea has disappeared 
from another. 

But what aspect does the problem take on when we bring 
in the notion of a Divine Mind ? It seems a simple matter to 
say that "the things of sense" exist in the mind of God during 
the intervals of our perception of them, and, thus, may come 
back again into our experience. This appears to be doing no 
more than rinding a place for the external world as the plain 
man conceives the external world. When, however, we bear in 
mind that sensible things are supposed to be nothing else than 
sensations or ideas, we are impelled to ask ourselves: Do all the 
sensations or ideas which any sentient creature has ever had 
in connection with this table exist actually and continuously in 
some Infinite Mind ? and is it the permanent existence of this 
frightful thicket of inconsistent experiences that we mean by 
the continued existence of the table, and that we regard as the 
explanation of our seeing the table again when we open our 
eyes? Surely, when I say : "I believe my table is still in the 
next room," I do not mean that God has an idea, or a collection 
of such, any more than I mean that a particular man has an 
idea. On returning to the room, I do not perceive the other 
man's impression or idea ; I infer that he has one, because I 
see him and the table. And if by ideas we really mean ideas, 
and by God's Mind we really mean a mind in any unequivocal 
sense of the word, it is as absurd to say that the table which I 
now see is an idea in the Divine Mind as to say that it is an idea 
in that of some other man. Both the plain man and the psy- 
chologist know very well that the contents of other minds are 
not thus directly revealed to us at all. One must be far gone 



52 The World We Live In 

in metaphysics, and an adept at the art of loose and vague ex- 
pression, to conceive of the things that we see and feel as being 
someone's else impressions or ideas, and to succeed in per- 
suading others that such a belief is reasonable. As to the 
literal transfer of ideas from an infinite mind to a finite, it is 
neither more nor less absurd than the literal transfer of one 
man's sensations to another man. 

No, the continuous existence which Berkeley attributes to 
physical things is a beggarly existence — a patchwork psychical 
existence. How are we to explain his contenting himself 
with this ? We can only explain it by holding clearly in mind 
two things : First, that, in accordance with tradition, he felt 
compelled to assume that everything we can perceive directly 
is Idea ; and, second, that he was a sensible man and was well 
aware that he had no right to mutilate Everybody's World 
beyond recognition. 

In Everybody's World, in common life and in science, it is 
taken for granted that, although ideas are fugitive existences 
and come and go in ways which have to be accounted for, 
nevertheless physical things exist continuously and go through 
their changes whether we do or do not perceive them. Berkeley 
was not uninfluenced by this feature of Everybody's World. 
He assumed, as a natural conviction, the permanence of sen- 
sible things, and he then set himself to work to give, within the 
frame furnished by the notion that the things we see and feel 
are ideas and nothing else, some intelligible account of it. In 
the second of the "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous," 
he says that men commonly believe that all things are per- 
ceived by God, because they believe in the existence of God. 
He, on his part, infers the existence of God, because all sensible 
things must be perceived by Him. 

Thus, the permanence of the things perceived by sense 
comes first. It is simply assumed. And, as it is further as- 
sumed that the things in question are ideas, it seems to follow 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 53 

that, to exist, they must exist in some mind. It appears, then, 
that our idealist could not help accepting "things" very much 
as we all do, but he was forced to view these "things" under a 
new and a strange light. They became to him ideas, continu- 
ously existing, but in no sense independent ; real things that 
were not quite real, or quite capable of constituting a real 
physical world ; things that had to board around, like a coun- 
try schoolmaster in the days of our fathers, passing their time 
now in this mind, now in that ; passive things, unable to act 
and react among themselves, never physical causes and effects ; 
things of too little consideration to be set up as gods by the 
enlightened idolater, as Berkeley, in his theological zeal, takes 
the trouble expressly to point out. 3 

There can be no question that things have lost by passing 
through Berkeley's hands. They are no longer the things of 
common thought and of science. The vision in the cloud has 
been bought dear — it has cost us a real physical world, and has 
substituted for it something unreal and fantastic, a something 
whose stability and permanence is of a highly questionable 
kind. Berkeley thinks and speaks of physical things as it is 
not permissible to think and speak of them on the street and in 
the laboratory. If we enter no objection, it is because, he 
being a philosopher, we do not care much what he says, and we 
do not judge him as we judge other men. 

Can the doctrine of the World as Idea be made more reason- 
able without being wholly done away with? It really does 
seem too absurd to say that, when I step out of my room, I 
leave behind the sensations which I had while there, that these 
continue to exist, and that I can pick them up again on my 
return. But may I not, while holding to Berkeley's funda- 
mental thesis that all existence must be psychical existence, 
try to avoid this unnatural preservation of sensations or ideas, 
and their incomprehensible transfer from mind to mind? 
In a pregnant sentence, the significance of which Berkeley 



54 



The World We Live In 



himself appears little to have realized, he says : "The table I 
write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it ; and if I were 
out of my study I should say it existed — meaning thereby 
that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some 
other spirit actually does perceive it." 4 

It seems, then, that I may speak of a thing as existing either 
when I actually perceive it, or when I know that, under certain 
conditions, I can perceive it. In the mind of John Stuart Mill 
this thought developed into the theory that material things 
are "permanent possibilities of sensation." 5 According to this 
doctrine, in saying that furniture exists in the next room al- 
though no one is there, I do not mean that sensations exist ; I 
mean that permanent possibilities of sensation exist. 

To the man discontented with Berkeley's doctrine this may 
seem, at first sight, something of an improvement. The com- 
mon sense distinction between sensations and things appears 
to be retained, and sensations are regarded as fugitive, while 
things are treated as continuously existing. But a little careful 
scrutiny reveals, in the first place, that any plausibility which 
attaches to Mill's view arises out of the fact that he has made 
it easier for himself and for us to slip unawares into the com- 
mon sense doctrine, accepting a world of physical things as 
do the plain man and the man of science ; and reveals, in the 
second place, that Mill has not at all given us information as to 
what things are — he has merely pointed out to us what may 
be expected to happen if things do exist. I must dilate for 
a moment upon these two points. 

As for the first. Let us go back to the philosophers dis- 
cussed in Chapter II, and let us ask whether there would be 
anything unnatural in their describing things as possibilities 
of sensation. Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, the 
Schoolmen, Locke, and the rest, might very well have spoken 
thus. Even the Skeptic could have called things unknown 
possibilities of sensation. Was there not supposed to be 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 55 

something to which sensations could be attributed? Some 
believed that they knew a good deal about this something, and 
some believed that they knew very little, but all accepted it, 
and referred sensations to it in one way or in another. To be 
sure, a good many of these thinkers would have maintained, if 
questioned, that, in saying that things give rise to sensations, 
we have not said about them all that we are justified in saying. 
But they could have agreed in saying so much, and in calling 
the things permanent as compared with the sensations. 

Now, Berkeley threw away these things, as we have seen, 
and tried to make his world out of sensations. Mill made a 
feint of throwing them away, but he really brought them back 
again under another name. It is a very instructive fact that 
in his famous "System of Logic," where he is not quarreling 
with Sir William Hamilton, but is trying to give a serious and 
scientific account of the world we live in, he finds it necessary 
to give the following enumeration of all Namable Things : 6 — 

1. Feelings, or States of Consciousness. 

2. The Minds which experience those feelings. 

3. The Bodies, or external objects, which excite certain of 
those feelings, together with the powers or properties whereby 
they excite them. 

4. The Successions and Coexistences, the Likenesses and 
Unlikenesses, between feelings. 

Mill apologizes, it is true, for the introduction of the third 
class, and calls it a concession to common opinion. But I affirm 
without hesitation that his book could not have been written if 
he had consistently excluded it. His main interest was not psy- 
chological, but lay in the attempt to investigate the methods by 
which the laws of nature are discovered. He could not dispense 
with a system of nature, and he does not even try to do so. 

Let us, however, pretend that he is a serious follower of 
Berkeley, and that, when he says that something exists in the 
next room, he really means only that he could have had sensa- 



56 The World We Live In 

tions which he has not had, and that he may have sensations 
which he has not. He is sitting and writing. He hears a clock 
strike. How shall he account for what he hears? There is 
no clock in the room. May he say, "The law of causality 
demands that I assume 'the fact that I might have had, or 
may have, certain sensations ' to be the cause of the sensations 
which I actually have" ? 

What sort of a world is this ? What becomes of the clock 
situated in space at a certain distance from Mill's body, 
with its wheels revolving, its hammer striking? What be- 
comes of the sound waves supposed to set an actually existent 
sense-organ in motion and, thus, to give rise to sensation? 
The whole apparatus disappears. We cannot construct a 
world out of "might have been's" and "may be's"; and a 
physical world constructed out of psychical "might have 
been's" and "may be's," i.e. out of possible sensations, is as 
absurd as a complex of sensations made up of physical possi- 
bilities. Mill's world is even more unreal than Berkeley's; 
but, as it is so easy to slip from it into the world of common 
sense, turning "possibilities of sensation" into things, one con- 
fuses the two, and one does not realize how poor and unreal a 
thing it is. 

And now for the second point. It is the common opinion 
of mankind that, if a given physical thing exists, it can, under 
appropriate conditions, be perceived by beings that have the 
proper organs of sense. But it is held with equal conviction 
that it may enter into a multitude of other and very different 
relations. Thus, a potato can be perceived. A potato that can- 
not conceivably be perceived is no potato ; that is, it does not 
exist. A potato, however, may also be buried in the ground, 
or may be boiled. A potato that cannot conceivably be 
buried or boiled is just as certainly no potato ; it does not exist. 

We have seen that Mill distinguished between sensations and 
things somewhat as other men do, and that he regarded the 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 57 

sensations as fugitive and the things as permanent. But, 
in making the being of things to be nothing else than "possi- 
bility of sensation," he departs enormously from the treatment 
accorded to things in common thought and in science, and ig- 
nores everything save the one relation. Why did he cling to 
"possibility of sensation" rather than to "possibility of being 
buried" or "possibility of being boiled"? Are such physical 
relations not equally essential ? 

The explanation of his attitude — the explanation of the 
attitude of every subjectivist, whatever his particular shade 
of opinion — is to be found in the development of thought 
recorded in the two chapters preceding. Men attempt to 
account for appearances by distinguishing between appear- 
ances and things ; they conceive of things as transmitting to 
the mind copies or representatives of themselves ; they con- 
clude that the representatives are more directly known than 
the things; they doubt whether there really are such things 
as men have supposed, and they decide to repudiate them ; 
they find on their hands sensations or ideas and nothing else. 

The physical things of common thought and of science 
disappear under such treatment, and physical relations proper 
disappear with them. Perhaps I had better say, physical 
things would disappear, if they had the least self-respect. If, in 
spite of the fact that they are refused recognition, they come 
creeping back and peep in at the door, it is little wonder that 
they disguise themselves as possibilities of sensation. Their 
only hope of admission lies in their having it supposed that they 
can establish some sort of a relationship to a family accepted 
as of good standing. It should not be overlooked, however, 
that, in coming back in their capacity as relatives merely, they 
have lost all their usefulness as physical things which may 
serve as an explanation of appearances. When I send for 
the plumber, I have a right to be disappointed if he presents 
himself only in his capacity as a father. 



58 The World We Live In 

It is quite as important in our day as it was in the days of 
Berkeley and in the days of Mill to dwell upon the unreality of 
the World as Idea. Men still talk of the physical as though 
it were something psychical, and they sublimate their material 
world into a mere phantasm. It is true that neither on the 
street nor in the laboratory do men permit themselves such 
liberties. But there are scientists who manage to enjoy a 
Jekyll-Hyde existence, and who, during their irruptions into 
philosophy, feel free to throw off all restraint. 

Thus, it is to be presumed that Professor Mach, who was 
once a physicist, was accustomed to treat the apparatus in his 
laboratory as physical and talk about it as did his colleagues. 
Becoming a philosopher, he tells us that physical things are 
composed of sensations. 7 And Professor Pearson, whose spe- 
cial field is mechanics, informs us, 8 when he philosophizes, that 
external things are sense-impressions, really inside ourselves, 
but which we "project" without. Shade of Aristotle, remind 
us again that, if everything is sensation, there can be no such 
thing as sensation, for there is really no such thing as sense. 
Can any conceivable thing be, even to a philosopher, composed 
wholly of "inside" ? How real is a world composed of sense- 
impressions which we throw out, and yet do not precisely throw 
out, since they remain within ? Let us, without more ado, all 
sit upon our right ; and let every post consist wholly of its own 
upper end ! 

"But," I think I hear it insisted, "such crudities of expres- 
sion are not usually to be attributed to those who have entered 
the philosophic fold through the door. May a man not hold 
that the World is Idea, in some sense, and yet not demolish the 
world ? " I answer : if by sensation one does not precisely 
mean sensation ; if by idea one does not precisely mean idea ; 
if these words are made to cover something really external, not 
conceived of as the content of any mind, not a "possibility," 
not a "projection" — then, of course, one may call the world 



The Unreality of the World as Idea 



59 



sensation or idea without treating it as those have done whom 
I have discussed in this chapter. But it does not seem unfair 
to ask those who like to use such words in a sense contrary to 
the common one, and who call themselves idealists, while de- 
parting widely from the views of Berkeley and Mill, whether 
there does not lurk a danger in the very diction that they 
employ ? Certainly there is some danger of misleading others ; 
it is not inconceivable that they deceive themselves. May it 
not be that they have become realists of a certain kind — let 
us say, enlightened realists? or, perhaps, enlightened realists 
with an idealistic emotional tinge ? I leave the question for 
the present, merely stating that the World as Idea is an unreal 
and phantom world, if we take the word "idea" in its traditional 
and usual sense. The right of the philosopher to create out 
of common words a language of his own seems fairly open to 
dispute. 9 



CHAPTER V 

THE WORLD AS IDEA AND THE RELUCTANT WITNESS 

When a man attains to a certain degree of eminence, every- 
thing concerning him becomes of importance to a vast number 
of persons. Along with what is really valuable in the writings 
of Goethe and Schiller, we treasure casual remarks and 
trite aphorisms to which we should pay small attention were 
they not coupled with a great name ; we collect them into little 
books bound in vellum, and we present them to our friends at 
the turning of the year. Napoleon's insignificant comment 
on the tower of the Antwerp cathedral finds its way into the 
guidebooks. The problem whether a given Elizabethan dram- 
atist did or did not dine with another notable person of a June 
day in some year of our Lord or other is thought a proper sub- 
ject for scientific research. We treasure scraps of letters, 
often of no ascertainable importance either to literature or to 
science, provided they are traceable to a famous pen ; and our 
comment upon their contents is inspired by a lively interest and 
colored with a genial good will. And when what a man of 
established fame says really is of some importance, his utter- 
ance carries with it a weight of authority out of all proportion 
to the groundwork of argument upon which it is based. 

I do not criticize this very human weakness. I merely note 
it and remark that it would give me great pleasure to be able 
to show that Immanuel Kant, who stands upon an imposing 
pedestal in the philosophic Hall of Fame, consistently disap- 
proved a philosophy which does not strike me as sound, and 
consistently approved another which seems to me more 
reasonable and more in accordance with sober good sense. 

60 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 61 

But it is not easy to claim with a show of reason that Kant 
is all one's own. He has a perplexing habit of talking now on 
this side, now on that. The utmost that one can hope to do 
is to induce men to believe that he, on the whole, wanted to be 
of a given party, and that he was anxious not to be classed with 
certain other persons toward whom he shows, in various places, 
a lively antipathy. 

"It is not given to every one," said Kant, " to write with so 
much acuteness, and at the same time in such an attractive 
manner, as did David Hume." He might have added : "It is 
not given to every one to write with such lucidity and con- 
sistency that, although critics and commentators may differ 
as to one's right to hold given opinions, there can be little cause 
for dispute touching the fact that one has intended to take 
this or that definite position and no other." Had Kant pos- 
sessed this gift it would have curtailed enormously the Kantian 
literature. Why grope one's way about with a lantern in a 
world already sufficiently illuminated by the blessed sun? 
But this gift he did not have. 

Neither in this brief chapter nor in the two chapters to 
follow shall I attempt to prove that Kant was consistent. 
Consistency, or a relative degree of consistency, was a simpler 
problem for a man like Hume, who took his philosophy lightly 
and could view the demolition of a world with good-humored 
cynicism. To say that we are compelled to believe that there 
is an external world, but can adduce no adequate ground for 
the belief, was easy for him, and it did no violence to his 
nature. 1 

Against this genial skepticism the scientific conscience of 
Kant rebelled. The earnest little man was in a narrow way; 
he was sore pressed. There were influences at work to drive 
his unwilling feet along the seductive path that ends in ideal- 
ism ; on the other hand, he felt that he simply must not lose 
the physical world of common thought and of science, content- 



62 The World We Live In 

ing himself with so poor a substitute as a world of mere ideas. 
So he beat about somewhat at random, hitting, I think, upon a 
thought which could really help him out of his difficulty, but 
not holding to it very consistently, and not avoiding certain 
lapses into two types of philosophical doctrine, incompatible 
with each other, and incompatible with the doctrine in which 
lay his only hope of salvation, namely, the attaining of a 
world, the real world of science, and the attaining of it ration- 
ally, not by violence, after the fashion of the man who believes 
for no reason at all, nor by unwitting fraud, after the fashion of 
him who finds himself reduced to the straits of Pierre d'Ailly 
and Descartes. 

The two ditches into which Kant, as he walked, kept stum- 
bling in spite of himself were unequivocal idealism, on the one 
side, and the doctrine of a duplicate world, on the other. 
Should any one care to maintain that either of these doctrines 
may properly be called the philosophy of Kant, he can un- 
doubtedly find some passages which appear to support his con- 
tention. We are many of us in a position to help him by giv- 
ing references to such. It is worthy of remark, however, that 
Kant is more often to be found in the second ditch than in the 
first, for he took much less pains to avoid a slip in that direc- 
tion; and it is further worthy of remark that from neither 
ditch can one catch a glimpse of the little wicket gate which was 
the goal of Kant's endeavor. 

I have already touched briefly upon Kant's treatment of 
"appearances" and "things."* That he did not absolutely 
let go of the things is plain enough to those who can read him 
without prejudice. On his own principles, and conceiving of 
things as he did, he ought to have let go of them, of course. 
Like a multitude of his predecessors, he distinguished between 
things as they can appear, and things as they are in them- 
selves. It is the old traditional distinction which, in Descartes 
* See Chapter II. 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 63 

and Locke, appears as that between ideas and the physical 
causes of ideas. We have seen * that, even in the philosophies 
of such thinkers, it is hard enough to keep one's hold upon the 
things, as all connection between the ideas supposed to be 
immediately given, and the duplicates of such ideas supposed 
to exist without, seems to be cut. Nevertheless, whether 
one has a right to assume the existence of the things or not, it 
is not palpably absurd to talk about the things as if they 
existed ; one's words are not manifestly devoid of meaning. 

When, however, Kant takes away from the things every 
single mark by which a thing of any sort can conceivably be 
identified as such ; when he denies things position in space, 
existence in time, reality, causal relations, qualities of every 
description, indeed, absolutely everything that has any sig- 
nificance whatever, — then it is natural that men should begin 
asking themselves what he has kept in retaining the things, 
and should raise the question whether he has kept anything 
whatever. Those who do not want to believe in the things 
would hail every fresh robbery perpetrated upon them with a 
sensible pleasure ; and they would end by saying: "I told you 
so ! Kant does not really believe that there is anything there 
at all." 

But we must never forget that, when we have said what we 
think a man ought to be, we have not necessarily said what he is. 
Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, it is quite possible 
to make things and their existence wholly meaningless, and 
yet to go on believing in the existence of things. Men did it 
before Kant's day, and men have done it since. In this 
chapter I am chiefly concerned with what Kant, in spite of his 
treatment of things, did not want to be, and what various per- 
sons have wanted to make him. He did not want to be an 
idealist — the ditch on his left he would avoid at the risk of any 
degree of inconsistency, for he believed firmly that he who 

* See Chapter II. 



64 The World We Live In 

stumbles into it loses his world and becomes a shade among 
shadows. 

Before proceeding to consider the evidences of this inclina- 
tion and conviction on Kant's part, it is worth while to consider 
under what circumstances one may be assumed to mean what 
one says. When a man speaks vaguely and his utterances do 
not harmonize with one another, there may naturally arise 
disputes as to how seriously he would have this or that expres- 
sion of opinion taken. Sometimes men say things without fully 
realizing in what sense they may be understood. Sometimes 
their utterances are the expression of a passing mood, and do 
not represent anything like a settled conviction or habit of 
thought. 

But let us suppose that a man in his fifties, one who has all 
his life been accustomed to critical scientific work, publishes, 
after at least twelve years of reflection, a bulky volume in- 
tended for the learned. Let us suppose that this is reviewed 
by another scholar, who scents in it, and points out, an affinity 
to Berkeley's doctrine of the World as Idea. Let us suppose 
that the author thus reviewed falls into a high state of exas- 
peration, and publishes, two years after the appearance of the 
book criticized, a very lengthy and elaborate answer, in which 
he repudiates sharply the supposed relationship to Berkeley, 
and takes occasion to make various strictures upon him and 
upon idealists generally. Let us suppose, finally, that six 
years after the first publication of the book in question, the 
author publishes a second edition, modifying the work in the 
spirit of the treatise printed four years before, and incorporating 
in it a "Refutation of Idealism." 2 Can we, under such cir- 
cumstances, maintain with any color of reason that the 
author's antipathy to idealism is a thing to be taken lightly 
and to be explained away ? Surely not. Kant disliked ideal- 
ism from the bottom of his soul. It threatened to rob him of 
his real world ; and, if he could help it, he would have none of it. 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 65 

It is no wonder, thought Kant, that "the good Berkeley," 
holding such views as he did, "degraded bodies to mere illu- 
sory appearances." 3 Nor does he regard Berkeley as stand- 
ing alone in his unfair treatment of the things revealed by 
sense : "The motto of all genuine idealists," he writes, "from 
the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is included in the for- 
mula : ' All knowledge through the senses and experience is 
nothing else than illusory appearance, and only in the ideas of 
the pure understanding and reason is truth to be found.'" 4 

Kant's strongest point is not the history of philosophy, and 
one may question the propriety of calling Parmenides an ideal- 
ist and of classing him under this title with Berkeley. As a 
matter of fact the former held on to what the latter was most 
anxious to throw away — a duplicate world beyond appear- 
ances. Nevertheless, Kant's sagacity was not at fault in 
detecting that each did a certain injustice to the world spread 
out before the senses, revealed in sight and touch and hearing 
and the rest. Parmenides and his followers deliberately de- 
graded it to the rank of mere appearance, and contrasted it 
with a world more real. So did many others who help to fill 
the long stretch of time between the Eleatic and the first great 
idealist. Berkeley made a brave effort to avoid this blunder, 
and insisted upon the reality of the things we see and touch. 
As we have seen in the chapter on the Unreality of the World 
as Idea, his effort was a comparative failure. Berkeley's 
" things " were not the real things of common sense and science ; 
in spite of themselves, they have a flavor of the Eleatic unreal- 
ity ; they are not merely appearance, but they come danger- 
ously near to being "mere appearance." 

All those who, wittingly or unwittingly, rob of their reality 
the things given in our experience, Kant is disposed to con- 
demn en masse, as guilty of genuine idealism. It is true that 
he calls his own doctrine idealism, but he does it with many 
apologies for using the word at all, and he insists that it is the 



66 The World We Live In 

direct opposite of "that idealism proper" 5 to which he has so 
strongly objected. 

He has used the word, he explains, because in one point he 
agrees with the idealists: he regards space and time, with all 
that is contained in them, as belonging to the realm of the 
appearances of things, not to that of things-in-themselves or 
the properties of such. He believes, however, that his "so- 
called" idealism stands alone, in that it regards the world of 
appearances revealed to us as a world which owes its constitu- 
tion to the native peculiarities of our sensibility and our capac- 
ity for thought. Given the raw material of sensation, we work 
it up into a world of things, and the nature of our minds pre- 
scribes its laws to all possible experience. This strikes Kant 
as putting into our hands a sure criterion by which truth may 
be distinguished from illusory appearance. 6 

His own idealism, thus, seems to him to be so different from 
all other kinds that it keeps a real world, whereas all others 
revel in unrealities. "Idealism proper," he writes, "has 
always had an extravagant aim, and can have no other." He 
will have no confusions; he would like to have given to his 
own doctrine some other name, for the better avoiding of such, 
but he compromises by calling it "formal" or "critical" ideal- 
ism, and he hopes that this may distinguish it from the "dog- 
matic" idealism of Berkeley, and the "skeptical" idealism of 
Descartes. 7 

Notwithstanding his apologetic adoption of the name, 
Kant's resentment against the extravagances of idealism burns 
within him. The idealist threatens to rob him of his world, 
and, by the saints ! he will not be robbed ! In his zeal against 
unreality, he even seems to forget that he has called himself 
an idealist of a sort, and he incontinently attacks "idealism" 
without giving to that objectionable substantive any qualify- 
ing adjective. Thus, he writes : "However harmless idealism 
may be considered as regards the essential ends of metaphysics, 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 67 

although it really is not harmless, yet it must remain a scandal 
to philosophy and to the human reason in general to be com- 
pelled to assume, merely as an article of faith, the existence of 
things external to us, from which things we nevertheless get all 
the materials of knowledge even for the internal sense, and not 
to be able to refute satisfactorily any one who takes the notion to 
call it in question." This is from the preface to the second edi- 
tion of the famous " Critique " ; and in the same bit of writing he 
classes together idealism and skepticism as "dangerous to the 
schools, but scarcely likely to be taken up by the public." 

The same feeling is unmistakably present in the much-dis- 
cussed refutation of idealism introduced into the second edition 
of the "Critique." It is true that Kant there distinguishes 
between different kinds of idealism, but the title "Refutation of 
Idealism" stares us boldly in the face, the argument is preceded 
by the statement that "idealism" brings forward a powerful 
objection to proving indirectly that things exist, and in an 
appended note we are informed that "the game played by 
idealism" is, with more justice, turned against itself. 

If ever a man was anxious to clear himself of the charge of 
consorting with Berkeleyans and all such pestilent fellows, it 
was Kant. He would have a physical world, the world recog- 
nized by the sciences, the world of permanent things outside 
of us, a world quite distinct from mere "presentations," or, as 
Berkeley would have called them, "ideas." His words are the 
more emphatic in that he finds it not a little difficult to answer 
satisfactorily the charge brought against him, and that he 
thinks it necessary to retain what is to him an offensive name. 
We are not the less warm in our condemnation of ultra-con- 
viviality, if we feel that we must call ourselves moderate drink- 
ers, and if we learn that our neighbors are inclined to refuse 
us the compliment of the saving adjective. 

I have dwelt especially upon Kant's antipathy to idealism, 
partly, because of the humorous circumstance that he has the 



68 The World We Live In 

honor to stand at the head of a long line of idealists, whom, 
could he have lived and have retained his faculties unchanged, 
he would undoubtedly have characterized as men of "extrava- 
gant" aims; and partly, to bring out clearly the fact that he 
really was very anxious not to get too far away from Every- 
body's World, and not to repudiate or mutilate the body of 
knowledge contained in the special sciences, in the validity of 
which body of knowledge he had an unwavering faith. The ac- 
ceptance of "genuine idealism," or of "idealism proper," seemed 
to him to imply a denial of the real external world, and the re- 
duction of our experience to a realm of mere illusory appearance. 

We hear so much of the Kantian idealism, and of the post- 
Kantian idealism in its development in Germany, England, and 
America, that we are apt, even when we have some acquaint- 
ance with the history of philosophy, to think of the whole 
movement as more or less dignified by the weight of Kant's 
authority. But let us not forget the facts. David Hume, 
seduced thereto by Berkeley, brought the external world into 
court and put it in jeopardy of its life. Kant felt it his duty 
to appear and to testify in its favor. His intention was un- 
mistakable ; but his testimony was not very clear and it was 
not wholly coherent, so, to his disgust, he went on record as 
speaking rather for the plaintiff than for the defendant. It 
helped him little that he returned more than once to the 
court, and tried to make it plain that he really was a witness 
for the other party. Men did not wish to hear this ; and there 
have been those down to our own time who have refused to 
take seriously what he saw fit to say in emendation of his 
original statement. 8 

If, then, we decide to regard Kant as a witness in favor of 
idealism, let us do him the justice to record the fact that he was 
a reluctant witness. He is willing to be a "so-called" 9 ideal- 
ist, but he wishes it distinctly understood that his idealism is 
neither "genuine" nor "proper," and that he is not a man of 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 69 

"extravagant" aims. No world of illusory appearance for 
him ! He wants real things, really outside of himself, and 
clearly distinguished from "presentations," or ideas, which, as 
he expressly tells us, are all fugitive existences, and by no means 
to be identified with permanently existing external things. 10 

Did Kant get such real things ? Did he even point out a 
way by which they may be gotten ? He tried three ways, all 
of which I shall consider in the next chapter. But I must 
close this chapter with a few paragraphs to remind us again 
that those who have traced some kinship between Kant and 
Berkeley have not been without the color of an excuse. Kant's 
first visit to the court resulted in the expression of some very 
doubtful sentiments. Thus, he said : — 

"Whatever the source of our presentations,* whether they 
are due to the influence of external things, or are produced by 
internal causes ; whether they have come into being a priori, 
or empirically as phenomena ; nevertheless, being modifications 
of the mind, they belong to the internal sense." . . , u 

"All presentations have, as presentations, their object, and 
they can, in their turn, be the object of other presentations. 
Phenomena are the only objects which can be immediately 
given us, and that in them which has immediate relation to the 
object is called intuition. These phenomena are not, however, 
things-in- themselves, but are themselves presentations, which, 
in their turn, have their object, which cannot be given us in 
intuition, and, hence, may be called the non-empirical or 
transcendental object, a mere x. 

"It is the pure concept of this transcendental object — 
which, indeed, in all our cognitions is always just the same, a 
mere x — that is able to give to all our empirical concepts in 
general their relation to an object, in other words, to give them 
objective reality." 

In the sentences following this extract, Kant goes on to indi- 

* Kant's word is " Vorstellung " ; Berkeley would have said " idea." 



70 The World We Live In 

cate that this "relation to an object" signifies only that our 
experiences are gathered into a certain unity, and ordered, by a 
native power of the mind. 12 

Kant speaks a language of his own, but there is no reason 
why the thoughts which he had in mind, when he wrote such 
sentences as the above, should not be rendered into good Berke- 
leyan English. In such a dress they would appear about as 
follows: Everything that we can represent in the imagination or 
perceive by sense may justly be called "idea," and regarded as 
in the mind. The things we perceive we must not suppose to 
be things existing independently of our minds; they are 
appearances. These appearances we refer to an object, which, 
as it can never be given in experience, and must remain to us 
wholly unknown, we may call the transcendental object, a 
mere x. It is the relation to this x, this unknown, — which is, 
by the way, precisely the same thing to us no matter what 
objects we may be talking about, for it really is simply an 
unknown — that makes our experience an experience of things 
and not a mere flow of unrelated ideas. But when we con- 
sider this x critically, we perceive that it is not really a some- 
thing without the mind, but is only a scheme by which the 
mind groups its experiences and introduces order into them. 

I can conceive Berkeley reading Kant's utterances and ex- 
claiming : We are brothers ; we are fingers of one hand ! Why 
should we disagree ? I am not so sure about the mind's doing 
all that you say it does ; . but we are, at least, at one in think- 
ing that we perceive nothing but our ideas ; and we are at one 
in our readiness to throw away the meaningless and useless 
duplicate external world in which so many of our predecessors 
interested themselves. Our world, the only world that in any 
way concerns us, is a world that exists in minds. You are an 
idealist as unequivocally as I am. 

When Kant came back again into the court to explain him- 
self, and to insist that he really did not mean to be a witness for 



The World as Idea and the Reluctant Witness 71 

the plaintiff, he did not speak clearly enough to cancel all that 
he had said before. People still shook their heads and said, 
On which side is the man talking ? Many decided, and many 
still think, that the court records prove the Sage of Konigsberg 
to have been a great and a very ingenious idealist — the man 
of all others who dealt the independent physical external world 
its death blow. 

The situation is exquisitely humorous. Our great witness 
for idealism is a reluctant and sulky witness, a protesting wit- 
ness, a witness whose heart is palpably with the plain man and 
the man of science. Let Parmenides and Plato and Berkeley 
soar irresponsibly if they will ; 13 he wants to keep his feet on 
mother earth, and when it is pointed out to him that he appears 
to have reached the region of the clouds himself, he expresses 
himself with asperity. His children rise up and call him blessed, 
but he talks bitterly of "extravagance." What was Kant 
thinking about when he begat such sons as have succeeded 
him ! Could he not, at least, have looked more narrowly to the 
terms of his will, putting his doctrine, so to speak, in trust, and 
providing against a reckless dissipation of the principal 
brought together by his genius and industry ? But it is too 
much to expect even a great philosopher to be also a prophet; 
just as it is too much to expect of plain human nature to sup- 
pose that it will forego the advantage of an appeal to a great 
name, where such an appeal may be made under any shadow of 
an excuse. I remind my reader that I have indicated at the 
beginning of this chapter that I am as sensible as others of the 
profit to be drawn from an association with the great. 

But, seriously, it is very clear what Kant did not want to be. 
To me it seems equally clear what he did want to be. He 
wanted to be a scientific man, and to hold unequivocally to the 
world of which the sciences give an account, a world to which, 
in his opinion, idealism does scant justice. How he went 
about his task I shall discuss in what follows. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WORLD AS PHENOMENON 

I have said that Immanuel Kant tried three ways of defend- 
ing the real external world accepted by science and by common 
sense, but put in jeopardy of its life by David Hume at the 
instigation of "the good Berkeley." It is a matter of no small 
moment to a defendant how a defense is conducted. To enter 
upon three distinct and incompatible lines of defense at the 
same time may well cause misgivings in the mind of one inter- 
ested in the outcome of the trial. 

Let us suppose it is a question whether John Smith is or is 
not officially to be declared dead and out of the way forever. 
Does it seem wise for one defending him to maintain : — 

i. That he undoubtedly lives, but in such retirement that 
he can never be described and identified, and must be repre- 
sented always and everywhere by a proxy quite unlike him, 
namely, by the shade which may be seen in the court ? 

2. That such is the complexion of this something before the 
court, that it is quite impossible to include it under the category 
of mere shades, all appearances to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing? 

3. That John does not enjoy a hypothetical and doubtful 
existence at all, but is a real man, actually present in the court 
in propria persona, and may be as directly known as judge and 
jury — indeed, has been known by judge and jury ever since 
they had the sense to know themselves ? 

It is thus that Kant would save for us the world menaced by 
Hume. He will, by entering upon the first two lines of defense 
indicated, gild the refined gold of seemingly palpable fact re- 

72 



The World as Phenomenon 73 

vealed to us in the third ; but his intemperate zeal tarnishes its 
fair surface. We begin to be suspicious of John, whom we 
thought we knew very well, when we are informed that he is 
in himself unknown and unknowable, but, nevertheless, exist- 
ent. Nor are we reassured when we are encouraged to believe 
that the John we see before us must be real, since such is the 
constitution of our faculties that we cannot but make him a 
real John. Who would dare to talk thus about a man outside 
of the pages of a philosophical book ? Are we really talking 
about a man ? 

The fact is that Kant speaks in this eccentric fashion because 
he is not quite clear in his mind about John. Defend him he 
must — what would life be without him ? But he is sadly 
hampered in his defense by the traditional doctrine of the 
duplicate world, not directly known, and its unreal or half-real 
representative in our minds. The man whose existence is in 
question seems to resolve himself into two men. One of these 
is unknown and is palpably not a man at all ; the other, who 
can be inspected, is under suspicion of being no true man. 
The case is a hard one. Whom are we to defend as existent 
and as real ? Until there is some certainty upon this point, it 
is impossible that we should speak consistently and coherently. 

Berkeley ignored the first man, and did his best to rehabili- 
tate the second. To Kant it appeared that his efforts were 
unsuccessful, and that the creature for which the Bishop 
vouched remained still a shade. So Kant kept the duplicate, 
reduced to the barest ghost of a duplicate, and he begged it to 
defend him somehow against the assaults of the idealist. 
At the same time, he insisted that the shade before the court 
was a very good shade, of settled habits, and by no means a 
mere shade, like Berkeley's disreputable protege. It was, to 
be sure, not quite the real thing ; but it was next door to it, 
and it ought to be good enough for anybody. 

Upon Kant, the champion of the World as Unknowable 



74 The World We Live In 

and of the World as Reputable Shade, I must dwell for a little, 
before I turn to the Kant who frankly accepts the man before 
the court as he is accepted without hesitation in science and in 
common life. In other words, I must consider Kant's two un- 
successful attempts to be a realist, before I discuss his discov- 
ery of the true path. It would not be fair to him to pass them 
over in silence. 

"Idealism," writes our would-be realist, when smarting under 
the charge of being an idealist himself, 1 "consists in the asser- 
tion that only thinking beings exist, and that the other things 
which we believe to be directly perceived by us are mere pres- 
entations * in minds, to which in reality no object having its 
existence outside of minds corresponds. I say, as against this : 
there are things given to our senses as objects existing outside 
of us, although of what they may be in themselves we know 
nothing, but know only their appearances, that is, the presen- 
tations which they cause in us by acting upon our senses. 
Hence, I certainly avow that there are bodies outside of us ; in 
other words, there are things which, while they are wholly 
unknown to us so far as concerns what they may be in them- 
selves, are nevertheless known to us through the presentations 
procured us by their acting upon our faculty of sense, and which 
we call by the name 'body.' This word, then, stands for 
nothing else than the appearance of that, to us unknown, but 
not on that account less real, object. Can this be called ideal- 
ism ? It is its direct opposite." 

According to this, what we see before us in the court is not 
the man himself, but his apparition, an "Erscheinung." The 
thing which it represents, and which is doubted by the skeptic 
and denied by the idealist, is that duplicate world which Kant 
never quite plucked up the courage to throw away. 2 Of its 
uselessness and insignificance no one can be more clearly con- 
scious than he appears to be in some passages, 3 but he has not 

* Kant's word is " Vorstellung " ; Berkeley would have said " idea." 



The World as Phenomenon 75 

always that consciousness, and this ghost continues to haunt 
him. It is real, and yet not real, something and yet scarcely 
something, theoretically impotent and yet capable of dictating 
his terminology and of coloring his views of what is revealed 
in experience. He who retains even a trace of superstitious 
faith in this ghost is compelled to do injustice to the man before 
the court. That man becomes to him literally an apparition, 
an echo, a second-hand something, which it is not enough to 
produce in public, but which must be vouched for by another. 
He does not merely "appear," but he is turned into "mere 
appearance." 

And yet Kant sees clearly that it will not do to make too 
unreal the man before the court — the external world as it 
seems to science and to common sense to be spread out before 
us for direct inspection. Who can construct a world out of an 
"I know not what"? Has it any place in the system of 
things which we are concerned to know ? Does any science 
waste its time in looking for what is, by hypothesis, not to be 
found ? < Does any man in private life institute a search for 
"x's"? Such "re's" are not "bodies." 4 They can be called 
"objects" only in a secondary and doubtful sense of the 
word ; 5 objects of knowledge they are not, for they cannot be 
known. They have no place in Nature, for Nature consists of 
something wholly different. 6 

It is absolutely essential, then, that something be done to 
rehabilitate the very man before the court — the world that 
we actually live in. It is the only world that means anything 
to us, and if that is discredited, we lose all. May we not 
maintain that, although it is appearance (Erscheinung) , it is, 
at least, not illusory appearance (Schein) ? Can we not dis- 
cover in it marks that redeem it from the charge of being only a 
world of ideas, a bad Berkeley an dream ? Admitting that all 
things must be classified as either phenomena, appearances, or 
noumena, the unknown correlates of appearances, 7 and admit- 



J 6 The World We Live In 

ting that noumena simply have to be left out of count as 
unusable material for world-building ; why not maintain that 
in phenomena, in appearances themselves, we have what 
suffices to make a world, and a very good world at that ? Let 
us put stiffening into appearances ; let us encourage them to 
hold up their heads as though they were something themselves, 
and not mere shamefaced shadows ! 

Kant is earnestly desirous of putting stiffening into them. 
But the ancient tradition which he cannot shake off has already 
condemned them to the limp and spiritless existence of copies, 
proxies, mental representatives of an extra-mental reality. 
He struggles with the old conviction that only mental phenom- 
ena can be directly known ; and as he is betrayed into making 
all phenomena mental phenomena, a world unequivocally ex- 
ternal threatens to elude him altogether. 

"We have in the 'Transcendental ^Esthetics ' abundantly 
proved," he writes, 8 "that everything perceived in space or 
time, hence, all objects of an experience possible to us, are 
nothing but phenomena, in other words, mere presentations ; 
and these as presented — as extended things or series of 
changes — have no independent existence outside of our 
thoughts." And again, 9 "Time and space, and, together with 
them, all phenomena, are in themselves not things, but are 
only presentations, and can have no existence whatever outside 
of our minds." 

AH phenomena, all appearances whatever, are thus in us; 
they come perilously near to being what Berkeley calls "ideas." 
The choir of heaven and furniture of the earth have no exist- 
ence independent of our thoughts and perceptions. At best, 
they can only be considered, when we are not actually perceiv- 
ing them, as the "possibilities of perception" dwelt upon by 
Mill: "That the moon may have inhabitants, although no 
man has ever perceived them, must be admitted ; but this 
means only that we could in the possible progress of experi- 



The World as Phenomenon J J 

ence, discover them ; for everything is real that stands in the 
same context with a percept according to the laws of the 
progress of experience." 10 

The man before the court is, thus, discredited at the outset. 
He is a man who exists only in the mind of the spectator, 
an internal man ; or, if external, external only in a certain doubt- 
ful sense which makes his "externality" difficult to distinguish 
from "internality." We may refuse to call him "idea"; 
but to call him "presentation," and then to say that presenta- 
tions can exist only in the mind, seems no better than a round- 
about way of insulting him. 

As we have seen in the last chapter, Kant has it called to his 
attention that he is standing with his arm around the neck of 
Berkeley, and he is properly horrified at the company he is 
keeping. He must do something to show that he is not of this 
party. But, instead of denying unequivocally and at once that 
the man on trial is an "internal" man, a mental creature, he 
insists that he is not an "internal" man of the sort that Berkeley 
supposes him to be, an illusory and unreliable idea, but is an 
"internal" man of a quite peculiar constitution, one whose 
peculiarities are fixed in advance by the nature of the mind in 
which he has his being, and one whose behavior can, hence, 
be predicted. 11 

In commenting upon Kant's procedure in this instance, it is 
necessary to point out, in the first place, that Berkeley never 
conceived his external world to be an illusory appearance, but 
regarded it as a very orderly thing, and as unquestionably 
real. 12 It is necessary, in the second place, to note that, al- 
though Kant maintains that his doctrine of fixed forms, native 
to the mind and dictating their character to objects experienced, 
gives us a "sure criterion" for distinguishing truth from illu- 
sory appearance; nevertheless, when the question is whether any 
particular presentation (Vorstelhing) is to be taken as indicat- 
ing the presence of a real external thing, or is to be condemned 



78 The World We Live hi 

as illusory, it never occurs to him to fall back upon this cri- 
terion, but he distinguishes between real and imaginary just 
as Berkeley did, and as we all do in common life. 13 Lastly, it is 
necessary to emphasize the fact that Kant's second line of de- 
fense is not a defense of the real external world of science and 
common thought at all, but is an abandonment of it. It 
is an attempt to make the best of a desperate situation — 
to give a fictitious externality to what is admittedly in the 
mind and nowhere else. Things knowable and unknowable 
have been classified as phenomena and noumena. Noumena 
have been as good as thrown away ; they have been banished 
from nature. Phenomena have been put into minds. Where 
in the world are minds ? Logically, they are not in the world 
at all, and exist at no time. 

This is the demolition of Everybody's World. It does not 
light it up for us, making clear its outlines, showing us what is 
meant by the distinction of ideas and things, subjective and 
objective, mere appearance and real existence. It does not 
justify our confidence in the world in which we live and have 
lived, but arouses a just suspicion. If nothing better than this 
can be said for the man before the court, he is surely no true 
man, and we do well to mistrust him. 

It is with relief that I turn from Kant the mouthpiece of 
ancient metaphysical prejudices to Kant the man of science 
and of robust common sense. To this Kant, in spite of him- 
self, the external world was as real and as undeniable as it is 
to the rest of us. We all recognize that we perceive some 
material things, and that we infer the existence of things unper- 
ceived, from what is directly revealed in perception. Here 
Kant is with us, even in the first edition of the " Critique." 

He informs us that, if we are to know real things, we must 
have perception, and, hence, conscious sensation. This does 
not mean that we must necessarily perceive the object itself, 
whose existence we are to know. But the object must, at least, 



The World as Phenomenon 79 

have some connection with a real perception, according to the 
analogies that represent real connection in an experience. 
Thus, he tells us, we recognize the existence of a magnetic 
matter penetrating all bodies, by starting out from the percep- 
tion of the iron filings attracted by the magnet; and this, 
notwithstanding the fact that the constitution of our organs 
makes a direct perception of such matter impossible to us. 
We know that, were our senses more acute, we should in expe- 
rience have a direct empirical intuition of what is now beyond 
the reach of our vision. The coarseness of our senses is not 
the measure of existence. Our knowledge of the existence of 
things reaches as far as perception and what may be inferred 
from perception according to empirical laws. 14 

Kant's illustration of the magnetic matter is taken from 
the science of the day ; but, to the principle which it illustrates, 
no one can take exception. It is common sense, and it is 
science. We do not believe that things exist just because we 
think of them ; we do not believe that only that exists which we 
actually perceive ; we believe that things exist if their existence 
may be inferred from what we perceive according to certain 
rules vouched for by our actual experience of the connection 
of things. 

Nevertheless, Kant is not satisfied. Have not the phi- 
losophers claimed that all these experienced things are only 
ideas, and nothing external ? How shall we refute the philos- 
ophers, and save the real external world? He who admits 
that only the mind and its ideas are immediately known re- 
duces the outer world to the conclusion of a dubious process 
of reasoning — it is banished from actual experience, and the 
skeptic who doubts its existence is never actually refuted. 
What we want is indubitable certainty. External things must 
be put upon the same footing upon which we stand ourselves. 
We never think of doubting our own existence ; let us treat the 
world as generously and admit it as unequivocally. 



80 The World We Live In 

There is, however, only one way of annihilating skeptical 
doubt and dogmatic denial. That way lies in maintaining that 
the external world is as immediately experienced as are our 
mental states ; that things are as directly known as are ideas, 
and are not obtained as the result of an inference from ideas. 
Into this road Kant struck at last. In the second edition of the 
"Critique of Pure Reason" he presented the famous "Refuta- 
tion of Idealism," which is his most serious attempt to rehabili- 
tate the external world — to show that there can be no reason- 
able doubt touching the existence and the reality of the man 
actually before the court. 

The argument is the elaboration of a thought which is 
brought forward in the vivacious answer to the charge of being 
an idealist which he had published four years before. There 
he writes: 15 "What is intuited as in space is empirically 
outside of me ; and since space, with all phenomena in space, 
belongs to the presentations whose connection according to the 
laws of experience proves their objective reality, just as truly 
as the connection of the phenomena of the internal sense proves 
the reality of my mind as an object of the internal sense ; it 
follows that I am through external experience just as conscious 
of the reality of bodies as external phenomena in space, as I am 
through internal experience of the existence of my mind in time. 
Even my mind I know only as an object of the internal sense, 
through phenomena which constitute an internal state; 
the being in itself that lies at the foundation of these phe- 
nomena is unknown to me." 

Again : "... It is as certain an experience that there 
exist bodies outside of us, in space, as that I myself exist as 
presented through the internal sense, in time ; for the con- 
ception ' outside of us' means nothing but 'existing in space.' 
However, the £ I,' in the proposition 'I exist,' signifies not merely 
the object of internal intuition, in time, but also the 'subject' 
of consciousness; and the word 'body' does not signify only 



The World as Phenomenon 81 

the external intuition, in space, but also the thing-in-itself that 
lies at the foundation of this phenomenon. Hence, it can with- 
out scruple be denied that bodies, as phenomena of the external 
sense, exist outside of my thoughts, as bodies, in nature. But 
it is precisely the same, if I raise the question : whether I 
myself as phenomenon of the internal sense — the ' soul ' 
of empirical psychology — exist, in time, outside of my pres- 
entative faculty ; for this must be denied as well." 

Descartes had placed the external world among the things 
that we can doubt ; but he had no doubt of the existence of 
himself and his thoughts. Kant wishes to put the external 
world upon precisely the same level as the latter. Who 
knows the mind as a thing-in-itself, outside of experience? 
Who need know or care to know the external world as a space- 
less and unperceivable duplicate of the world revealed by the 
senses? If the world is as real as we are, the only "we" of 
which we can know anything whatever, is it not real enough for 
anybody? We are conscious of ourselves; we are also con- 
scious of bodies ; in each case, we have experience. 

Let us not quarrel with Kant for his not wholly successful 
struggle with "the internal sense" and "the external sense"; 
these were inherited difficulties. Let us forbear to ask him 
in what sense bodies can be "outside of us," and yet exist only 
in our "thoughts," which are presumably "inside." A light is 
breaking in upon our philosopher. If it is insufficient to scat- 
ter the darkness completely, it is something to be thankful 
for, nevertheless. 

The "Refutation of Idealism" is an exceedingly curious bit 
of writing. Kant's thought is not very clear to himself, — how 
could it be, when he was occupying three positions simul- 
taneously ? — and his exposition is halting and repetitious. 
He is himself not satisfied with his argument, and he comes 
back to a restatement of it in a long footnote in the preface 
to the second edition of the "Critique." In each instance, he 



82 The World We Live In 

finds it necessary to insist that we must accept as fact the im- 
mediate consciousness of what is really external, and is not mere 
" presentation" in us, whether we can or cannot understand 
the possibility of such a consciousness. This means that the 
external world for which Kant means to enter the lists is not 
idea, is not presentation, does not exist only in our thoughts, 
is not internal, but is the independent external world of science 
and of common sense, which has been threatened by the 
philosophers. 

Of this world we have as direct a knowledge, he insists, as 
we have of our own ideas. It is most important to remember 
that the external world of which he is speaking is not the neb- 
ulous and chaotic realm of negations to which things-in-them- 
selves have been relegated. We not only do not know that im- 
mediately, according to Kant, but we do not know it at all. 
The world which he declares to be truly external and yet im- 
mediately known is Everybody's External World — the choir 
of heaven and the furniture of the earth, planets seen and 
unseen, human beings and possible inhabitants of the moon. 

The argument of the "Refutation" is as follows: 16 "I am 
conscious of my existence as determined in time. All de- 
termination in time presupposes something permanent in 
perception. But this permanent something cannot be some- 
thing in me, just because my existence must itself be deter- 
mined by this permanent something. Hence the perception 
of this permanent something is made possible only by a thing 
outside of me, and not by the mere presentation * of a thing 
outside of me. It follows that the determination of my exist- 
ence in time is only possible through the existence of real 
things which I perceive outside of me. Now, consciousness 
in time is necessarily connected with the possibility of this 
determination in time; and, consequently, it is necessarily 
connected with the existence of things outside of me, as the 
* " Vorstellung," — the word covers just what Berkeley meant by " idea." 



The World as Phenomenon 83 

condition of determination in time. In other words, the 
consciousness of my own existence is, at the same time, an 
immediate consciousness of the existence of other things 
outside of me." 

To this bit of reasoning, which cannot be said to shine with 
a steady light, Kant appended three main notes and a foot- 
note. 

In these he informs us : that idealism assumes that our only 
immediate experience is internal experience, and that, starting 
out from this, we must infer external things, while here it is 
proved, not presupposed, but actually proved, that external 
experience is properly immediate, whether we can conceive 
the possibility of this or cannot; that, furthermore, all our 
actual determination of time is in harmony with this, for we 
cannot determine time except by taking into consideration 
things and their motions — for example, the motion of the sun 
with respect to terrestrial objects ; and, lastly, that although 
the existence of external objects is indispensable to a deter- 
mined consciousness of ourselves, it does not follow that every 
presentation proves the existence of a real object, for there are 
such things as dreams and illusions — we must examine our 
experience in detail and test our presentations before we con- 
sent to trust them. In the recapitulation of his argument, in the 
preface to the second edition of the "Critique," Kant tries to 
make it very clear that the external and permanent something 
of which he is conscious in perception is in no sense a presenta- 
tion in him, for all presentations must be fugitive and changing. 
It is really and unequivocally external, and is yet immediately 
known. 

I have spared the reader the citation in full of Kant's tangled 
and patched argument. The original is within the reach of all, 
and I have given the substance. John Locke deplored, in the 
preface to his "Essay," that "the endeavors of ingenious and 
industrious men" had managed to make of philosophy, which 



84 The World We Live In 

is "nothing but the true knowledge of things," a something 
"thought unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred com- 
pany and polite conversation . ' ' Certainly, the terminology and 
the style of the "Critique of Pure Reason" are not to be 
commended; and every lover of Kant must regret that he had 
not the gift of expressing clearly and simply the profound 
thoughts that occurred to him, no one of which is incapable 
of being presented in a dress less calculated to conceal its 
form and features. 

Nevertheless, in spite of the tangle of thought and lan- 
guage, two cardinal points stand out unmistakably : first, that 
the real external world is as immediately known as our own 
"presentations," which Kant treats as fugitive existences in 
the mind and contrasts with things ; and, second, that what 
we recognize as our "internal" experiences can only be as- 
signed their place by having recourse to the external order of 
physical things. 

It may seem odd, at first sight, that he should have wished 
to prove what he claims to be immediately known. If the 
external world is as directly known as are our ideas, why set 
out from the latter to prove that we must immediately know 
the former ? Is there any more reason for this than there is 
for setting out from the former to prove that we are conscious 
of the latter? Again, must it not seem odd, to one who is 
acquainted with the two philosophers in question, that Kant 
should detest Berkeley, and have a good word for Descartes ? 17 
He evidently stands much nearer, in certain important respects, 
to the great idealist. To Berkeley, the real external things 
are the very things we see and feel, they are immediately known; 
to Descartes, they are the hypothetical duplicates of experi- 
enced mental things, which latter alone we directly know. 

But both of these peculiarities can easily be explained when 
we realize that Kant could not quite strip off the old prejudice 
that the mind is shut up to its ideas, and that one must begin 



The World as Phenomenon 85 

with ideas, wherever one may end. That he retained a flavor 
of this is clear from his insistence that we must accept an im- 
mediate knowledge of external things, even if we cannot con- 
ceive how such is possible. The difficulty is one only from 
the standpoint of a world known at one remove — the Car- 
tesian. If we once admit that things cannot be known except 
mediately, and by inference from ideas, then, of course, it is 
hard to understand how we can have an immediate conscious- 
ness of things. 

On this side, Kant is not wholly out of sympathy with Des- 
cartes, although he combats his position. Nor is he out of 
sympathy with him in a second matter of no little significance. 
The great French scientist accepted a world indubitably real 
and permanent ; he related ideas to it. To be sure, he thrust 
this world out of sight, and made it the object of faith, 
not of direct vision. Nevertheless, his world was such a 
world as Kant wanted ; it was not the iridescent unreality 
mirrored in a bubble. Kant wanted this world ; he wanted 
it directly, wanted to feel sure of it, as Descartes could 
not be sure. But he did not want a cheap substitute for 
it at any price. It was this that Berkeley offered him — the 
World as Idea. 

We quite miss the significance of Kant's "Refutation" if 
we fail to see that he made an important advance upon Berke- 
ley. He had a right to maintain that, in intention and in prin- 
ciple, at least, he was not in the least a Berkeleyan. At one 
with Berkeley in holding that things immediately perceived 
are the real things, he denies flatly the second part of Berke- 
ley's contention, namely, that these real things are ideas. 
To Kant, when Kant is at his best, they are not ideas, not 
"presentations," not mental things. They are not in the mind, 
but are really external, in a sense of the word which keeps 
"external" and "internal" sharply contrasted, as they are 
sharply contrasted in science and in common thought. 



86 The World We Live In 

In other words, Kant stood, not for the doctrine of the 
World as Idea, but for the doctrine of the World as Phe- 
nomenon. The difference is far-reaching in its significance. 
We have seen what consequences Berkeley deduced from his 
contention that the World is Idea. The idealists from his 
day to ours have drawn from the same thought conclusions 
scarcely less momentous, if somewhat different. To none of 
these "extravagances" does Kant's doctrine of the World as 
Phenomenon commit him. 

It simply cuts off an unknown and unknowable — a mean- 
ingless — "beyond," and insists that the real world is the 
world of ideas and things directly revealed. The World 
as Idea is the World as Subjective Phenomenon. Kant points 
out shrewdly that the World as Subjective Phenomenon is a 
world on one leg, and is incapable of standing alone. His 
World as Phenomenon has room in it for the subjective and the 
objective, for internal phenomena and external phenomena, 
for ideas and things. It is nothing else than the world of 
experience, Everybody's World, which contains minds and their 
ideas, to be sure, but which does not consist exclusively of such. 
The philosopher who accepts it frankly has to mark the distinc- 
tion between ideas and things, and to point out clearly what 
these words properly indicate. Kant was too heavily handi- 
capped with tradition to do this satisfactorily. But he should 
not, on that account, be denied the glory of rediscovering 
Everybody's World, after the philosophers had played with it 
and lost it. He saw it dimly, and through the mists of old 
philosophies — but he saw it unmistakably, and he fell into a 
rage when men tried to filch it from him. 

It cannot, then, surprise us that Kant disliked being called 
an idealist. He was only an idealist when an unlucky slip 
carried him into the ditch on the left. And he was only a real- 
ist of the old-fashioned type when the doctrine of the duplicate 
world pressed him too hard and he went headlong down the 



The World as Phenomenon 87 

slope to the right, becoming thereby as a sheep in the hands of 
the skeptic. From the first ditch, he could see nothing but 
Berkeley's World as Idea, which he repudiated ; from the 
second, he could see no world at all, but must content himself 
with a shadow cast by the Unknowable. The real world, the 
world we live in, the world of experience, was only visible when 
he kept to his true path, the one marked out in the "Refuta- 
tion." 

When on this path, Kant is not an idealist ; the thing-in- 
itself does not exist for him, it is a silly fiction which may be 
dismissed without more ado. He is concerned only with the 
ideas and things revealed in experience. In other words, he is 
a Modem Realist, the first great modern realist, the dis- 
coverer of the World as Phenomenon — Everybody's World, 
but Everybody's World seen under a clearer light and with 
sharper outlines. 

Seen under a clearer light, I say, because it is no small thing 
to recognize explicitly and consciously that things are to be 
found in appearances and not beyond or behind them ; to real- 
ize clearly that the fact that we have senses and perceive 
things does not in the least make it doubtful that things really 
exist and are perceived. Kant stands with the plain man; 
but the plain man is inarticulate — he cannot defend his own 
position. Kant is articulate ; or, at least, he makes it possible 
for us to be so, if we will but learn of him. Things are to be 
found in appearances, phenomena ; and yet some distinction 
is to be drawn between things and their appearances. In the 
past, men had dwelt upon the distinction and lost the things ; 
Kant puts us in a position to keep both. 

Now, there is nothing to prevent the modern realist, who 
accepts the ideas and the things of Everybody's World, 
and who recognizes that both stand on the same level as re- 
vealed in experience, from beginning at once with an examina- 
tion of things as revealed. He may analyze the experience and 



88 The World We Live In 

show just what it is. Idealism is sufficiently refuted by simply 
pointing out that we actually have an experience of things, 
and that the universally accepted characteristics of things are 
so different from the marks which lead us to call certain expe- 
riences ideas, that there is little excuse for confusing the two. 
Indeed, one may point out that in actual practice the two are 
seldom confused. 

If, however, one has, touching the immediacy of our knowl- 
edge of things, secret doubts, or has even those vague misgiv- 
ings which are the traces left by discredited and disappearing 
doubts, it is perhaps more natural to attempt the rout of the 
idealist by a flank movement. One may reassure oneself and 
others by showing, that he who reduces the world to idea loses 
his world altogether. He cannot arrange even his ideas in 
any semblance of order ; he cannot identify them as ideas. 
It is only by bringing in what he denies that he can avoid 
palpable absurdity. 

It is undeniable that we do order our ideas, and do not whirl 
helpless in a chaos of unrelated experiences. Here I sit at this 
moment. It is I who sit here, and not another. I can run 
back in memory over the bygone years and can arrange my ex- 
periences in a certain order which represents a life. Once I 
was in Philadelphia, far from my present place of abode. I had 
percepts, felt emotions, saw visions and dreamed dreams. The 
years succeed each other ; they stand out from one another. 
Those experiences really did take place, and did take place at 
definite times, the intervals between which are measurable 
with some accuracy. Later I was in New York. Other 
experiences; other dates. Then I crossed the water. The 
emotions which accompanied the crossing have their own 
definite place, and they fall into it with automatic precision. 
Here I am now. 

Is this "now" afloat upon a sea of subjective foam and tem- 
poral indeterminateness ? Has it no fixed and measurable re- 



The World as Phenomenon 89 

lation to time and circumstance preceding? I accept it as 
lying somewhere within the brief span which stretches between 
my birth and my resignation of this pleasing anxious being. 
But how far is it from each of the facts recalled to me by 
memory ? Where is my measure ? Moreover, the two insig- 
nificant occurrences which terminate the brief span alluded to, 
and which form the extreme limits of the line upon which I can 
arrange all my subjective facts — these do not constitute the 
beginning and the end of time. They can, it seems, be dated. 
But, with reference to what ? 

No one has recognized more unmistakably than did Kant 
that striking feature of Everybody's World dwelt upon in Chap- 
ter I ; namely, that all subjective phenomena are ordered by a 
reference to the physical system of things. Not by a refer- 
ence to my ideas of the physical system, mark you ; not by a 
reference to the ideas of some one else. The time of ideas, 
whether the ideas be mine or another's, must be referred to the 
hour-glass, to the clock, to the diurnal revolution of the earth, 
to the changing moon, to our yearly journey around the sun. 
From time immemorial have men thus measured time. There 
has been no other way of doing it. 

Let one seriously make the attempt to fix the date and the 
duration of his own dream by keeping strictly and unequivo- 
cally to ideas. Let one determine the time of one's percept 
without fixing a surreptitious eye upon the motions in nature! 
Kant has done well. He who denies a world truly external has 
no real time ; a fig for his dates — they amount to nothing ! 

Nevertheless, had Kant not been embarrassed by certain 
prejudices touching the "internal sense" and time as its "form," 
he might have followed the lead of his great predecessor Aris- 
totle,* and have approached the question in a broader way. 
Can all experience be internal experience ? If there is no world 
to which I can cling, and in which I can take my place, I am no- 
* See Chapter 11, p. 22. 



90 The World We Live In 

body in particular ; I am nowhere ; I exist at no date. All my 
ideas are adrift — or, rather, they are not mine, and they are 
not ideas. Contrasts and meanings are lost in the great 
catastrophe which overtakes not merely the solid world, but 
even time, space, and all our ideas of things. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE REALITY OF THE WORLD AS PHENOMENON 

Does any living soul in Everybody's World think the less 
of things because they appear ? Here is my table before me, 
here is my hand guiding my pen. Table, hand, and pen all 
appear, of course. But that is what makes me believe in 
them ; it does not make me doubt them. 

I believe also in a multitude of other things which do not 
actually appear now. Nevertheless, they belong to the class 
of things that might appear. Many of them do appear some- 
times ; and those of them that never do appear — the other 
side of the moon, the center of the earth, and such things — 
at least, belong to the class of appearing things, and stand in some 
intelligible relation to those that fall under my observation. No 
man could induce me to believe in their existence, if he began 
by denying that they belonged to this class and stood in this 
relation. 

The appearing things above mentioned I call, in accordance 
with common usage, physical. There are, however, other 
things that appear also. Dreams appear, memories appear, 
sensations and volitions appear. If they did not, I should 
know nothing and say nothing about them. These things, 
again in accordance with common usage, I call psychical. 

Now, it is perfectly certain that, in common life, no man 
regards it as a suspicious circumstance that tables and chairs 
should appear. It is equally certain that no one finds it strange 
that thoughts and feelings should appear, too. The appear- 
ing, in itself considered, is not enough to discredit an other- 
wise reputable character; no one dreams of so regarding it. 

91 



92 The World We Live In 

Whatever else is or may be, that, at least, which appears, is. 
Appearance is the foundation upon which all assertions of 
existence rest. 

The man of science is here entirely at one with the plain 
man. He believes in what appears, and he believes also in 
certain things which do not directly appear, but which he con- 
ceives as belonging to the same general class "and connected 
with what appears as those things that do appear are observed 
to be connected with each other. In his assertions of exist- 
ence, he does not give himself up to a debauch of the crea- 
tive imagination. He begins with what evidently lies be- 
fore him, and he follows the thread of analogy. If he did not, 
he would command no respect and would deserve no credence, 
whether he talked, with the physicist, of stars, atoms, electrons, 
rays, or, with the psychologist, of sensations and judgments. 
He rests on appearances and can rest on nothing else. It is of 
no small moment to him not to misconceive appearances. 

One can misconceive appearances. One can ask oneself 
doubtfully whether appearances, phenomena, are such stuff 
as a real world may be made of — not a sham world, a copy 
world, but a real world which contains both minds and physi- 
cal things. That the doubt is not unnatural to a man reflect- 
ing upon his world rather than actively using it, must be 
evident to those who have considered the poor opinion of 
appearances arrived at by the long line of thinkers stretching 
between Empedocles and John Locke. Such a prejudice 
against appearances is, to be sure, strikingly out of harmony 
with common thought and with accepted scientific procedure ; 
we give the lie to it every day in actual practice ; and yet it 
has held its own with extraordinary tenacity. 

I have said in the last chapter that Kant rediscovered 
Everybody's World, and threw light upon it by pointing out 
that it is a world of appearances, of phenomena, and nothing 
else. One must never forget to add that, although he did thus 



The Reality of the World as Phenomenon 93 

characterize it, he said quite enough to reassure us on the score 
of the respectability and the trustworthiness of appearances. 
His World as Phenomenon is simply our world of ideas and 
things. Within it there is abundant room for the common dis- 
tinction between appearance and reality. It contains appear- 
ances which we may regard as mere appearances, as the rep- 
resentatives of something else. It contains also the realities 
to which such appearances are referred. Indeed, it is only 
within it that the reference of anything to anything else has 
any significance whatever. It is the world of experience — 
which only means that it is the experienced world, the one and 
sole world that we have. 

Kant did not wish to deny common distinctions which are 
vouched for in experience. He points out expressly 1 that, 
within the realm of phenomena, there is a sense in which we 
very properly distinguish between an object in itself considered 
and the particular appearance which the object may present 
as perceived in a given instance through this or that sense. 
He insists, however, that even in our profoundest investiga- 
tions into the world presented to the senses, we have to do 
with nothing but phenomena. Thus, he writes, we speak of a 
rainbow as mere phenomenon or appearance, and of the rain 
as the thing in itself. This he approves ; if we mean by the 
word "rain" something physical, we are quite right in so 
expressing ourselves. We are drawing a distinction within 
experience, not passing beyond it. The rainbow, the rain- 
drops, the very space through which the drops fall, all these 
belong to the realm of phenomena. An object beyond the 
realm of phenomena must remain unknown to us. 

As we have seen, Kant denies that this mere cipher can 
properly be called an object ; he says that to us it is nothing ; 
he remarks that in fact no one ever takes the trouble to ask 
questions about it; he informs us that it is only phenomena 
that can concern us at all. Indeed, whether the truth was 



94 The World We Live In 

or was not wholly clear to him, he makes it unmistakably 
clear to us that it is absurd to talk about realities at all, if we 
do not mean such realities as are revealed in experience, reali- 
ties which must, in the broader sense of the words, be called 
phenomenon or appearance. 

To point out that neither in common life nor in science can 
we possibly have to do with anything which may not properly 
be called phenomenon is merely to emphasize a commonplace 
truth that the difficulties of reflective thought may betray us into 
overlooking, plainly as it lies before our very eyes. Imagine a 
man of science saying : " I am now perfecting an instrument by 
the aid of which I hope to reveal what is in the nature of the 
case incapable of detection ! " "By the ingenious manipulation 
of these mathematical formulae, I expect to prove the existence 
of what cannot in any intelligible sense be regarded as belong- 
ing either to the physical world or to the mental ! " Such a 
man of science we may class with the ingenious men of Laputa, 
and we may pass by on the other side, without being con- 
demned as unreasonably unsympathetic. 

But it is one thing to call attention to the commonplace truth 
that we have to do actually only with phenomena, and it is a 
very different thing to slap common sense in the face and to 
tell it that all phenomena are mental phenomena. Berkeley 
distinguished between appearances and real things as well as 
Kant, but he insisted that both must necessarily be ideas. 2 
Kant — the Kant of the "Refutation" — refused to see the 
world through this distorting glass and to give it a gratuitous 
Berkeleyan twist. 

He begins, as we all do, with what is given in perception. 
He accepts the existence of things perceived, and also the 
existence of things which, according to certain empirical 
rules, may be inferred to exist if we start out with what is 
actually perceived. The magnet and the iron filings, the earth 
and certain heavenly bodies, the human beings that sur- 



The Reality of the World as Phenomenon 95 

round us, belong to the class of perceived things. The hypo- 
thetical magnetic matter, stars as yet undiscovered, possible 
inhabitants of the moon, belong to the class of inferred 
existences. He accepts the latter class, as he accepts 
the former. To the Berkeleyan, the distinction is between 
ideas experienced and ideas that may be experienced ; to the 
disciple of Mill, between actual perceptions and possible per- 
ceptions ; to Kant, between external things perceived and 
external things, just as really existent, but unperceived. In 
each case, what is directly known and what is inferred from 
what is directly known are supposed to be made of the same 
stuff — the Berkeleyan begins with ideas and he ends with 
ideas ; the Kantian begins with external things not ideas, and 
he ends with external things not ideas. The one has no prop- 
erly independent external world, as all ideas must be "in the 
mind " ; the other has such a world. Thus, the second man 
stands on the side of common sense and science ; the first does 
not. 

Now, the Kant who thus frankly accepts the external, 
non-mental world, is the Kant who sees clearly that it is the 
very man before the court who must be defended. He does 
not deny that this very man must be seen with the eyes and 
felt with the fingers, that his voice is a voice heard with the 
ears and imperceptible to a deaf man. All this is something 
to be taken for granted, and which cannot possibly prove our 
man to be an unreal and internal man, who can exist only in us. 
The man is not literally our creature ; he can come and go 
without asking our leave, and, when he is outside, he can 
signify his contempt of the court by hurling a stone through 
the window. He is not subjective phenomenon, mere idea, 
but he certainly is phenomenon, for he appears now, and when 
he does not appear, he still belongs to the class of things 
that do. 

It puzzled Kant that the man should be phenomenon and 



96 The World We Live In 

yet not internal; related to the senses and to the intellect, 
and yet independent and outside. To admit the relation to 
sense, and then to explain it in such a way as to deny that there 
is any such thing as sense, seems perfectly absurd ; to deny 
the relation to sense altogether seems no less absurd. Kant 
was puzzled, as I have said ; but he showed his good sense in 
keeping his feet planted upon the soil of Everybody's World, 
and in accepting the distinctions which undoubtedly obtain 
there and are found of service. 

Some things are so much taken for granted, that they rarely 
occupy our attention, and are in danger of being overlooked 
altogether. Who notices the air he breathes, unless it is 
spiced with some unusual odor, or has grown so foul that it 
cannot be breathed with comfort? Under such conditions, 
we do notice it, and we discuss it with one another. And an 
unusual turn of expression, an ambiguous phrase, the bold 
assertion of some philosopher whose name inspires awe, such 
things as these may cause us to stumble even upon a path 
which we have traveled for years in easy unconsciousness, 
and may lead us to deny or to doubt what has presented itself 
before us in the very light of day. 

Have we not always known that things appear ? Is it not 
assumed without question in all that we have to say to each 
other, that we are talking either about what is actually expe- 
rienced, or about something which bears some analogy to it 
and has some significant connection with it? And have we 
not always distinguished between mental phenomena and 
physical ? With what degree of patience would we listen to 
the incoherent babble of a man actually incapable of drawing 
the distinction between them? What should we think of a 
man who in practice treated them alike — a man to whom his 
own ideas, the ideas of other persons, and physical things 
could melt weakly into one indistinguishable class called 
"phenomena" ? 



The Reality of the World as Phenomenon 97 

The road which we habitually travel is a good road. It is 
paved with well-tried distinctions. Nevertheless, the attach- 
ing of a word, the giving of a name to which we are unaccus- 
tomed, may lead us to view our old familiar friend, Every- 
body's World, with a suspicion wholly unwarranted by the 
discovery of any new and damaging fact. The World as 
Phenomenon, the World as Appearance, may seem to us to be 
something less than the world which we have always known. 

The word "phenomenon" has a suspicious sound. To 
some, it smacks of the monstrosities to be seen in the dime 
museum ; to others, it suggests rare and evanescent occurrences 
in nature, such as the borealis race, "that flit ere you can 
point their place " ; to still others, it introduces a feeble-kneed 
creature with an apologetic smile, a poor substitute for the real 
man with whom we should like to converse, but who finds it 
impossible to accept in person the invitation to our philo- 
sophic symposium. 

The less technical word "appearance" has also its draw- 
backs. It seems almost inevitable that, when it is used, the 
familiar distinction between appearance and reality should 
suggest itself, and that the bystander should begin to think 
meanly of appearance. He who is willing to say boldly that 
the world is appearance, or, worse yet, mere appearance, and 
who leaves it to his reader to draw his own conclusions from the 
remark, is pretty sure to be set down as a man of extravagant 
notions, as one taking a mental as well as a moral holiday 
and temporarily irresponsible. 

Still, it seems important that the two words in question should 
be saved for philosophy. We have nothing to put in their 
place. They stand as an admonition to talk, when we talk 
at all, about the things we know and can know, rather than 
about those that we do not and cannot know. They remind 
us that we have senses, and that things present themselves 
under varying guises. They do not necessarily say any- 



98 The World We Live In 

thing to the detriment of things, for it is clear that men actually 
do find out a good deal about things, and yet it is evident that 
it never for a moment occurs to them to look for their informa- 
tion elsewhere than in appearances. Where else could they 
look? 

Let us, then, approach without prejudice the World as 
Phenomenon. I believe that if the speaker is sufficiently care- 
ful and explicit, and if the hearer is clear minded and unprej- 
udiced, misunderstandings may be avoided. Our task is a 
twofold one. We must endeavor to make quite clear what is 
the significance of calling the world phenomenon ; and we must 
try to show how, although it is proper to describe the world 
thus, there may still be a physical system of things, properly 
external, neither a mind nor in a mind, but, in an intelligible 
sense of the words, outside of all minds and independent of our 
ideas. 



CHAPTER VIII 

OUR WORLD AND OTHER WORLDS 

There is a sense in which it is palpably absurd to speak of 
any save the one universe embracing all physical things, and 
all intelligences, of which it can mean anything to say, "they 
exist." To it belong the undiscovered stars of which Kant 
speaks ; to it belong unknown planets, and their inhabitants, 
if there be any ; to it belong the intelligences of men, and that 
whole descending series ending in the rudimentary stirrings of 
psychic life which lie on the borderland of which we know 
little and sometimes speak as though we knew much. Any- 
thing that ever was bears an intelligible relation to anything 
that ever will be. In a sense, it belongs to the one whole with 
it. If the admission that the universe is one is enough to con- 
stitute a man a monist, 1 there is no dweller in Everybody's 
World who may not lay claim to the title. Is he not at once 
ready to hail with derision the statement that a man who 
never lived anywhere once discovered a planet that was no- 
where to be found ? The light that never was on sea or land 
may claim his recognition if we give it a lodgment in the mind 
of some poet who himself was somewhere ; but eject it even 
from this corner in the system of things, and he exclaims, 
quousque tandem ! in disgust. 

On the other hand, there is a sense in which it it is true that 
every one lives in his own world, which is in some respects 
different from the world of every other sentient creature. If 
the assent to this truth is enough to constitute a man a plu- 
ralist, 2 then every inhabitant of Everybody's World may justly 
lay claim also to this title. He knows well enough that, when 

99 



ioo The World We Live In 

men make statements about the world, they are talking about 
something of which they believe that they have experience, 
and he is quite well aware of the fact that the experience of one 
man, as such, is not indistinguishable from the experience of 
another man or from that of the brutes. It would astound 
him to be told that to man and to the earth-worm the soil with 
which both are in contact could seem the same. Shall we take 
up this pluralistic admission and thrust it home to him ? Shall 
we cut him loose from his cozy home in the shell fixed to the 
rock of cosmic fact, and cast him adrift on the waste of waters ? 
It is not fair to Everybody to set his tacit admissions before 
him in unnatural isolation, rendered explicit, printed in capitals, 
exaggerated singly until they fill his field of vision and blot out 
everything like a background. There is no schoolboy who 
does not have occasional aches and pains, or does not imagine 
himself to have them. If we put into his hands the terrific 
descriptions of the ills that flesh is heir to which usually accom- 
pany the printed recommendations to purchase this or that 
bottle of patent medecine, we may easily induce him to believe 
that he is the victim of maladies to which justice can be done 
only in the Greek and Latin tongues, and which are the heralds 
of approaching dissolution. Some men have in the past talked 
about the "One" in such a way as to induce the credulous to 
believe that no other number may properly be called a number. 
Some have emphasized the diversity of our experiences in such 
a wise as to suggest to the man of visionary temper that each 
of us creates for himself a world out of practically nothing, 
scarcely even needing to borrow a little corner of chaos on 
which to exercise his superabundant energies. Meanwhile, it 
remains true that Everybody's World is a very good world to 
live in, and all actually live in it. It is a world in which, if 
distinctions are not always clearly drawn, they are, at least, 
not wiped out in the interests of somebody's favorite ab- 
straction. 



Our World and Other Worlds 101 

Even those who talk intemperately of the One buy and sell 
as though dealing with the Many ; and those who emphasize 
the independence of Each indicate by their actions their 
realization of the fact that no one may conduct himself as 
though he were a little causa sui, had no neighbors, and might 
be permitted to draw space, time, and the starry heavens over 
the borders of his diminutive farm, setting up a sign to warn off 
trespassers. Like the frightened schoolboy, we find it possi- 
ble, in the intervals between our paroxysms, to dispose of 
hearty meals and to abandon ourselves to soothing sleep much 
as do those who are not about to die. 

Now, in talking about "the World" at all, we tacitly admit 
that the world is in some sense one, and is not a bit of private 
property. The same tacit admission has been made all along 
by the men who have built up step by step a series of sciences 
which attempt to describe the world, and which quietly ignore 
the differences of constitution which characterize different 
individuals. On the other hand, in calling the world, with 
Kant, phenomenon, we admit that each perceives the world as 
it is revealed to him, and that it may present itself to different 
sentient beings under different aspects. The psychologist is 
directly concerned with these aspects as such. His science 
has manifestly a right to exist, though no more of a right than 
such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry, 
which, while concerned with the world as phenomenon and with 
nothing else, can afford to treat the fact that it is phenomenon 
as something to be quietly assumed and as needing no explicit 
mention. 

In a sense, then, we all perceive the same world, if we may 
be said to perceive at all ; in another sense, what one per- 
ceives is not identical with what is perceived by another. 
These distinctions it is wise for us to accept. Our only reason- 
able task is to try to make as clear as possible what is the 
significance of emphasizing the fact that the world is phe- 



102 The World We Live In 

nomenon, and what is the significance of the assertion that, in 
spite of this fact, we all belong to the one world, if we exist at 
all. In the present chapter I shall dwell briefly upon the 
thought that the world is phenomenon. 

Criticism, like Charity, should begin at home. I must 
recognize that the world is phenomenon to me. I perceive 
things, but I do not perceive things except as I am aware of 
appearances. It forces itself upon my attention that the 
appearances of things are intimately related to my various 
senses. To the eyes things present themselves as colored, to 
the ears as sonorous, to the finger-tips as hard or soft, to the 
taste as sweet or bitter. Why are they not colored to the 
finger-tips or sonorous to the tongue? Evidently the consti- 
tution of the organ is not something that one can leave out of 
account. 

This established relation between appearances and sense- 
organs is not in the least discredited when reflection makes 
explicit the implicitly accepted fact that the sense-organs 
themselves are only known in appearances. I did not at the 
outset conclude that the nature of the appearance is related 
to the nature of the sense-organ, from observing that an 
imperceptible eye, when open, made possible perceptible sun- 
sets. From the outset, I was concerned with an eye that could 
in some way be perceived, or I should never have established 
any sort of a relation between open eyes and seen colors. The 
unreflective man, who is interested in his world from a practi- 
cal point of view, who opens his eyes and shifts his position 
that he may see things, who turns his head that he may hear, 
who raises a rose to his nose that he may smell it, does not 
come to his conclusions on a basis of no experience at all. He 
observes certain facts and he utilizes them. One of the most 
familiar of the facts known to him is the relation of appear- 
ances generally to sense-organs, which sense-organs also he 
accepts as they appear and because they appear, although it 



Our World and Other Worlds 103 

would scarcely occur to him to call them appearances. Long 
before I was capable of reflection at all, and at an age at which 
the term " phenomenon" could only inspire respect through 
its formidable length, it was by connecting phenomenon with 
phenomenon that I learned how to see things, to taste things, to 
smell things. 

It is as natural to observe that other persons have bodies and 
sense-organs as it is to observe that I have. My neighbor's 
eyes are open to inspection as well as are mine. He acts as if 
he saw with them. I infer that he does so, and that there is an 
analogy between what he sees and what I see. Sometimes, I 
make allowances for the man. If he is blind, I do not expect 
him to see at all. If he describes the red flowers on the table 
in certain ways, I infer that he suffers from some form of 
color blindness. I may make a special study of those to 
whom the usual avenues of sense do not seem to stand open as 
they do to most of us, and may attempt to imagine what the 
world as revealed to them must be like. 

I need not here enter in detail into the question of our infer- 
ences regarding the experience of the world enjoyed by beings 
that have a bodily constitution in some respects similar to and 
in some respects differing from our own 3 . But it is important 
to bear in mind certain truths admitted with practical una- 
nimity both by the scientific and by the unscientific. These are : 

1. That the world would not appear to us as it does, were 
we ourselves different. 

2. That it cannot appear to creatures who actually are 
different from us just as it appears to ourselves. 

3. That it is reasonable for us to assume that it does appear 
to other creatures, although we are not directly aware of the 
appearances vouchsafed to them. 

4. That it is not absurd to try to form some notion of what 
the difference between our experience of the world and that of 
other creatures may be like. 



104 The World We Live In 

If, then, two sentient creatures perceive the same thing, as 
it seems very reasonable for us, in accordance with universal 
usage, to say that they may, it does not follow that they must be 
having the same experiences. The appearances in which the 
thing is revealed to the one need not even be very similar to the 
appearances in which it is revealed to the other. This should 
not strike as astonishing any one who will reflect upon the fact 
that he himself has various senses, and that a thing present- 
ing itself even to the one sense does not always present the 
same appearance. He does justice to this fact in the state- 
ment that he perceives the same thing under various aspects 
or in its varying appearances. And when he says that he and 
another perceive the same thing, an identity of experience or 
appearance is no more essential than it is that a thing as given 
in his own experience should smell as it looks. Whether he is 
concerned with his perceptions alone, or with the comparison 
of his own with those of another, the problem is the same — 
in what sense is a thing, revealed only in appearances, to be 
distinguished from its appearances, and in what sense may it 
properly be called the same although the appearances vary ? 4 

The fact that things must appear different to different crea- 
tures was a stone of stumbling to the ancient skeptic. The 
World as Phenomenon seemed to him to resolve itself into a 
number of sham worlds, no one of which could properly claim 
to be real, and which he found himself unable to supplement by 
the addition of something more worthy of confidence. How 
the world may seem to beings otherwise constituted than are 
we has often enough been matter of speculation to the philoso- 
phers since. 

Kant, who emphasizes so strongly the fact that the world 
is phenomenon, could hardly avoid an explicit reference to the 
world as known by beings other than man. Did he not, by a 
sort of a "Copernican revolution," make the man before the 
court our satellite? He denied that we perceive him to be 



Our World and Other Worlds 105 

real and respectable because he is such independently, and, 
hence, impresses us as such. He attributed his settled habits 
to the fact that it lies in our nature to thus clothe with decent 
attributes the naked unknown. But what if the spectator 
has some other nature ? All tailors are not alike. The infer- 
ence to be drawn seems obvious. 

It is only from our human point of view, writes Kant, that 
we can speak of space and of extended things. 5 As for the in- 
tuitions of other thinking beings, we cannot judge whether they 
are subject to the same limitations as are ours. 6 Time is merely 
a subjective condition of our human intuition, and, abstracted 
from the subject, is nothing. 7 We know only our mode of per- 
ceiving objects, which is peculiar to us, and which, though it 
does not necessarily belong to every sentient being, does be- 
long to every man. 8 

Kant was even given to speculating about the possible ex- 
periences of beings with no senses at all, 9 and he does not seem 
to regard such speculations as wholly insignificant. In these 
flights we need not follow him ; we have enough to reflect upon 
if we will consider what lies at our doors. 

An indefinitely extended series of beings whose bodily con- 
stitution differs more or less from that of man forces itself 
upon our notice. Those who have read Darwin's fascinating 
little book on earthworms will recall the patient efforts of that 
man of genius to arrive at some notion of the experiences that 
can constitute for these lowly creatures the revelation of a world, 
if we may call so bare a hint a world and such a darkling glim- 
mer a revelation. From the hypothetical psychic life of micro- 
organisms up through the sweep of animated nature to the 
brutes which we recognize as humble friends and with whom we 
can have a fellow-feeling, our imagination may range and may 
picture tentatively a series of phenomenal worlds all differing 
from our own, and yet not one differing so absolutely and to- 
tally that it is meaningless even to speak of it. And, notwith- 



106 The World We Live In 

standing what Kant has to say of the specific oneness of man- 
kind, we may, as we do, ask ourselves seriously how the world 
reveals itself to the child, to the savage, to the man devoid of a 
sense or defective in intelligence. It is not nonsense to ask 
whether things in space as revealed to those born blind are 
things in space as revealed to us. 

The doctrine of evolution is hoary with age. But, in the 
half century which has elapsed since the publication of Dar- 
win's immortal work "The Origin of Species," the conception 
of a gradual development of the organic world has worked with 
a peculiar fruitfulness in the mental sciences as well as in the 
physical. The dominant idea which controls the thought of 
the present-day investigator is that mind as well as body 
must be treated as a natural phenomenon, making its appear- 
ance under given conditions ; to be accounted for, as physical 
peculiarities are to be accounted for, by a reference to heredity 
and environment; "a thing so intimately related to the body 
that it must be looked upon as a function, an instrument 
significant in the struggle for existence, a something full of 
meaning if accepted in its setting, but, torn from that setting, 
a riddle, a document in cipher, an unfruitful fact for science." 10 

Thus, the world as perceived by each creature is, in a sense, 
a function of the creature perceiving the world. It could not 
present itself as it does if he were not what he is. Each 
gazes upon his own world, and the worlds differ in glory as do 
the stars. Nor, since we can set no absolute limit to the 
evolution of forms, may we assume that the world considered 
from the human point of view is the world in a sense in which 
no other can properly be called such. It is a very good world, 
but there may conceivably be a better, if we mean by "better" 
farther on in the ascending series, possible extensions of which 
naturally suggest themselves to us. 

Such thoughts put in a somewhat new light Kant's "Coper- 
nican revolution." It is not that they deny that interesting 



Our World and Other Worlds 107 

event altogether ; it is that they refuse to accept it as a cosmic 
fact unique in its kind and rendering us oblivious of all other 
facts. For the one cataclysmic revolution is substituted an 
uninterrupted series of revolts, none of them final, suggesting 
the normal history of a South American republic. As a matter 
of fact, we all do accept the World as Phenomenon, and we 
actually find within its hospitable borders room for a whole 
series of phenomenal worlds differing more or less from one 
another. Only one of these is ours and is known by us 
directly; but he who refuses to attribute to an earthworm 
the experiences appropriate to an ape, not only recognizes 
these many worlds, but tacitly accepts the fact that, in 
talking about other worlds than ours, we are not discussing 
a mere "x," but stand upon the basis of some actual knowl- 
edge of their nature. 

It must be held clearly in mind that no one of these worlds 
is to be confused with the unknowable duplicate world dis- 
cussed in Chapter II. Evidently, they all stand in relations to 
each other. It is hardly just to call them worlds, for that sug- 
gests a self-sufficiency and an independence which we have 
clearly no right to attribute to them. Let us rather speak of 
them as aspects or revelations of the one world, the World as 
Phenomenon. 

The many revelations Berkeley recognized. He tried to 
relate them, and to get some sort of a world-system, while 
treating the whole world as idea. Kant pointed out that times 
and places are lost, if we consistently treat the world as idea. 
It does seem undeniable that, if times and places are lost, it 
is absurd for me to talk of an evolution of living creatures, 
and to plume myself upon my good fortune in being born in 
the fullness of time, and when it was proper for such an expe- 
rience as mine to come into being. The mere recognition of the 
many aspects under which the world is revealed implies the 
admission that the world is, in some sense, one ; but it is not 



108 The World We Live In 

permissible to affirm a oneness that robs of their significance 
the many aspects. 

Common sense and science relate the many worlds — the 
many aspects of the world — to each other, by relating each to 
the physical system of things. In the next chapter I shall try 
to show what we mean by this physical system, and to make 
clear how grievously we wrong it when we call it "idea." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WORLD OF THE NEW REALISM 

Bless the concrete fact, the homely illustration, the plain 
speech which does not throw a veil of obscurity over things 
familiar ! It does seem as though it ought to be possible to 
describe in everyday language what we all do every day, and 
so to choose our words that, if our descriptions are an inade- 
quate account of our experiences, their inadequacy may be 
clearly apparent. In the present instance, let us begin, since 
the world is oppressively wide, with some definite familiar 
thing in the world, and let us see how every one treats it. 

I stand at a certain point and watch a woodcutter at work 
felling a tree. The ax swings, the chips fly, the blows re- 
sound. It is quite true that, had I no eyes, I should not see 
these things ; but it never occurs to me to account for the swing 
of the ax, the size of the chips, the rapidity of the progress 
made in the work, by a reference to my eyes or to my brain. 
I, the spectator, describe what is taking place before me, and 
I pass over in silence the fact of my presence and my bodily 
constitution. If I close my eyes, my experiences vanish ; if I 
walk toward the tree, they undergo a change. But I should 
never dream of saying that the woodcutter, the ax and its 
motion, the tree which is receiving the blows, are changed by 
the mere fact of my closing my eyes or moving about. 

Now I stand nearer to the tree than I did before. The tree, 
the ax, the woodcutter, have changed in appearance. I can 
distinguish the roughness of the bark, the shape of the cutting 
tool, the very buttons on the clothing of the workman. The 
differences between the experiences I had before and those I 
109 



no The World We Live In 

have now are sufficiently marked. They are not unaccountable. 
Everybody knows that, to explain them, I must bring my- 
self into the reckoning. I say that tree, ax, and woodcutter 
are the same, but that their appearance has undergone a change 
because I have shifted my position. In the new position, how- 
ever, the swing of the ax and the flying of the chips have the 
same significance that they had before. I do not account for the 
motions, the rapidity with which the chips fly, the deepening of 
the cut, by referring to myself. In either position I may be 
ignored, and changes which are taking place may be described 
independently. 

Again. When I ask : How big is the tree ? How tall is the 
man ? How much does the ax weigh ? it is quite clear that 
I am not concerned to know how the tree or the man appears 
under these or those conditions, or how heavy the ax feels to 
my right hand or to my left. When I am interested in the ap- 
pearances of things as appearances, I put my questions differ- 
ently. I say : How does the thing look ? How does the thing 
feel ? and the conditions must be clearly indicated, or the ques- 
tions are absurd. On the other hand, to insert conditions where 
they are out of place is equally absurd. I may not say that a 
given man is six feet tall when seen close at hand, or that an 
ax weighs four pounds when one is tired ; just as I may not 
say that it is ten minutes past one in the shade. 

To be sure, had I never seen anything or felt anything, 
I should never ask how high or how heavy things are. But this 
does not signify that I cannot estimate measures and weights, 
while ignoring the particular relation which the things in 
question happen at the time to bear to myself. I measure or 
weigh one thing in that I compare it with another, and it is 
tacitly taken for granted that, if a direct appeal is to be made 
to immediate experience of equality or inequality, the conditions 
under which the things are perceived must be the same. I 
may perfectly well say that a given insect looks a quarter of an 



The World of the New Realism 1 1 1 

inch long ; but I never mean by such a statement that it looks 
as long as a quarter of an inch marked off on a foot rule would 
look under a magnifying glass. 

I have long known that my body is in many respects the 
same kind of a thing as the tree, the ax, the woodcutter. 
Some parts of it I can perceive as I perceive these. My hand 
may be brought before my eyes, it may be moved farther off, it 
may be put behind me. The appearances vary, and I distin- 
guish easily between such changes in my experiences as are 
accounted for by the relation of my hand to my eyes, and cer- 
tain other changes which I call changes in my hand. If my 
finger swells from the sting of a bee, I do not refer the matter to 
the relation of my ringer to the eyes. I regard the swelling, as I 
do the flying of the chips, as a thing to be treated independently. 
My body can be measured, my body can be weighed, my body 
can be moved to or from other bodies. In all these respects it 
is like other bodies ; its size, its weight, its motions may be 
treated without taking into consideration the particular rela- 
tions of any part of my body to any sense. 

Suppose that, while I am standing opposite to the woodcutter 
and the tree, I close my eyes for a moment and then open them 
again. I may observe a chip to fly, without having seen such a 
swing of the ax as preceded the flying of the other chips. Shall 
I say that the flying of this chip is a thing apart and unac- 
countable ? May I maintain that it was brought about with- 
out any stroke ? or may I hold that the position of the ax 
before I closed my eyes may be regarded as the immediate fore- 
runner of the occurrence ? No one ever dreams of talking 
in this way. 

We have seen that, in describing what is happening to the 
tree, we can, and do, leave out of account the particular rela- 
tion of the tree to our sense-organs. Among the things that 
can thus be left out of account is this closing and opening of the 
eyes. Such a closing and opening result in what we call a dis- 



H2 The World We Live hi 

appearance and reappearance of things — something familiar 
to the most unlearned, and which no one is tempted to confuse 
with the annihilation and re-creation of the things that disappear 
and reappear. To fall into such a confusion would be an error 
analogous to that of assuming that distant trees are all in one 
piece, and only divide themselves into separate leaves as we 
approach them. 

Hence, I account for the flying of the last chip, just as I 
accounted for the flying of its predecessors, by referring to the 
swing of the ax. It is true that I do not perceive this directly, 
but I can, and do, ignore the fact, just as, in walking toward 
the tree, I ignore the fact that my experiences are changing, and 
say that tree, ax, and woodcutter remain unchanged. 

These objects belong, with my own body, to a much greater 
system of more or less similar things. This I discovered long 
before I was capable of reflection upon the fact. As I do not 
at all times perceive the few objects which have entered into my 
illustration, and do not at any one time perceive all parts of them, 
so I do not perceive always and wholly other objects which be- 
long to the system. That does not at all affect my acceptance of 
them as belonging to the system. To be sure, I must have evi- 
dence that planets, comets, or what not, do belong to the sys- 
tem ; but, given such evidence, I can ignore the question whether 
any one of my senses is or is not at a given time affected. 

That is to say, in dealing with the perhaps limitless physical 
world of which so small a part is at any time directly revealed 
to me, I must do exactly what I have done in watching the 
woodman at his work : / must distinguish between two orders of 
phenomena, and must be careful not to confuse them. 

The phenomena of the physical order constitute the world 
of things, the only world of things that we know, that we can 
know, or that it means anything for us to know. The phe- 
nomena of the mental order we contrast with this. In practice, 
the two orders of phenomena are confused only occasionally, 



The World of the New Realism 1 1 3 

and through what is palpably a blunder. The philosopher may 
not approach the distinction of physical and mental as though 
he were the first to have taken account of it. How the world 
of things should be dealt with has been settled long ago in com- 
mon life and in the special sciences. And just as the physical 
world has been carefully observed and described by specialists, 
so a man who is more and more becoming a specialist, the psy- 
chologist, has devoted his attention to the order of phenomena 
that we contrast with the physical. Are we in doubt just what 
classes of phenomena we may properly term mental ? we may 
turn to the psychologist, note what he has seen fit to appro- 
priate, and mark how he treats his material. Manifestly, sen- 
sations and percepts are regarded as mental, and are referred 
to the body. Evidently, certain other phenomena, such as 
fancies, memories, dreams, are also regarded as mental and 
are also referred to the body. The detailed classification of 
mental phenomena, and the precise nature of the bodily refer- 
ence in question, need not here concern us. 1 

But it does concern us very nearly to avoid any such mis- 
conception of the two orders of phenomena as may occasion 
confusion and result in incoherence. To escape this disaster, 
there are three points which we must never forget to bear in 
mind. They are all-important. 

In the first place, it should be remarked that the series of 
experiences which I have as I approach the tree and the wood- 
cutter — the changes that I regard as subjective — are not more 
directly and immediately perceived than are the physical 
changes of which I have experience. That the tree and the 
man change in appearance as I walk toward them is a fact of 
which I am immediately aware. I am, however, just as imme- 
diately aware of the swing of the ax and the flying of the chips. 
It seems incredible that prepossession in favor of some in- 
herited philosophical prejudice should absolutely blind a man 
to what lies plainly before him every day in his own experience ; 



H4 The World We Live In 

but that it can do so we are compelled to accept as fact. He who 
retains in his thought even a flavor of the old superstition that 
mental phenomena, as "internal," must be put into the body, 
very naturally supposes that the "mind," which he also puts 
into the body, knows the mental phenomena there more directly 
than it can possibly know physical phenomena. This he may 
hold in spite of his daily and hourly experience of the fact that 
he does not perceive any mental phenomenon whatever to be in 
the body, and does not perceive the mental more immediately 
than the physical. 

In discussing the first point, the immediacy of our experi- 
ence of physical phenomena, I have touched upon the second, 
for it is hard to keep them separate. We all speak of the 
"external world." There is abundant precedent for thus char- 
acterizing the physical system of things, and for contrasting 
with it our sensations, thoughts, and feelings, as something 
"internal." These expressions do not strike us as unnatural. 
Do they not take account of the reference to the body which is 
unmistakably present when we recognize any phenomenon to 
be mental ? 

This they undoubtedly do, and in so far they are useful. In 
view of established usage, it would be foolish to suggest that 
they be discarded. But they do carry with them the sugges- 
tion that mental phenomena are to be regarded as in the body, 
and the influence of this suggestion many find it difficult to re- 
sist. Historically, their error has a certain justification. As we 
have seen in Chapter II, men distinguished at a very early date 
between the appearances of things and the things known through 
appearances, and they were seduced into conceiving of the ap- 
pearances as little copies or representatives of the things con- 
veyed into the body through the channels of sense. They 
thought of them as being as literally in the body as is any 
physical organ or part of such. Gradually the gross materialism 
of this view was sublimated into something more or less differ- 



The World of the New Realism 1 1 5 

ent ; but the tendency to put the mind somehow into the body 
persisted through the centuries, and in various quarters it per- 
sists to-day. It is a recrudescence of the tendency, in the 
primitive uncritical simplicity which characterized it in the 
early Greek philosophy, that leads to such astounding state- 
ments on the part of certain of our contemporaries, as that sen- 
sations are to be placed at the brain terminals of the sensory 
nerves. 

Contrast with all this the actual facts, as they are open to 
inspection. In my experiences of the tree and the woodcutter 
phenomena of two orders are revealed. Although I may ac- 
count for the peculiar appearance of the tree and the man, as 
perceived from this point or from that, by referring to the rela- 
tion of my body to these objects — that is to say, although I 
may concern myself with psychological fact, and may expressly 
refer to my organs of sense — it should be emphasized that, 
under no circumstances whatever, is the peculiar appearance pre- 
sented by the tree and the man at any moment perceived to be in 
the body. I should add that our fancies and our dreams are 
no more perceived to be in the body than are our percepts. 

It is only just to the man of science who allows himself a holi- 
day excursion into philosophy, and who talks unbecomingly of 
sensations and ideas, to point out that he is half aware that he is 
playing. He has fallen into an ancient error, but he has not 
fallen flat on his back, as a man might have done, as, indeed, 
men did do, two thousand years ago. We are none of us an- 
cient Greeks. No man would be more astonished than the 
modern physiologist actually to find a sensation of any kind 
at any end of any nerve. He would as soon think of coming 
upon Banquo's ghost there. Not so Lucretius, the Roman 
disciple of Epicurus. With what hopes might he have been 
inspired had some one brought him from Egypt tales of an in- 
strument resembling the modern high-power microscope ! 2 

When, therefore, we speak of the "external world," we none 



n6 The World We Live In 

of us really mean by the expression the sum of physical things 
outside of our body. All the things really in our body are just 
as truly physical, and have their place in the external world — 
our digestive tract, our liver, our heart, our lungs, aye, our 
brain and every part of it. Nor is our brain, when in place 
and functioning, any less a physical thing than it is when re- 
moved from its natural setting and preserved in alcohol in the 
jar on the shelf. 

Let us, then, remember that, if we wish to mark the dis- 
tinction between mental and physical by using the words 
"internal" and "external," it is open to us to do so, but that 
it is, nevertheless, inexcusable to confuse quite distinct senses 
of these words, and to allow the crude ancient doctrine, whose 
echoes have come down to us, to blind us to facts that now lie 
before us in the light of day. Let us come back to the concrete 
facts within the experience of every one. We are as immedi- 
ately aware of physical phenomena as we are of mental, and 
no mental phenomenon presents itself to us as in the body. 

In the preceding pages, I have not obliterated, but have rather 
emphasized, the distinction between mental and physical, inter- 
nal and external. My only endeavor has been to make quite 
clear what that distinction is. I hope it has become plain that 
the supposed difficulties connected with an immediate knowl- 
edge of physical phenomena arise out of a blunder, and dis- 
appear when that blunder has been avoided. The blunder con- 
sists, at bottom, in an obliteration of the distinction between the 
mental and the physical. The mental is put into the body as 
though it were physical, the only physical thing immediately 
known, and things properly physical are treated as known 
through it and at second hand. Naturally, under the cir- 
cumstances, an immediate knowledge of physical phenomena 
appears inconceivable. 

When this blunder is clearly pointed out, wise men will, I 
think, seek to avoid it. It does seem as though it ought to be 



The World of the New Realism 117 

admitted that to make the mental unequivocally physical is a 
relapse into an error more appropriate to the childhood of the 
race than to its maturity ; an error belonging to a time when it 
did not seem inappropriate to speak of mind-atoms as inhaled 
and exhaled with the air men breathe, or to conceive of them as 
penetrating as far as the liver. And yet, those who see 
clearly enough that it is absurd to make the mental thus 
physical may easily fall into an error equally fatal, and may 
rub out the distinction between mental and physical in a con- 
trary fashion by making the physical mental. This brings 
me to my third point. 

Whether we make the mental physical or the physical men- 
tal, we in either case obliterate a distinction of the utmost 
significance in common thought and in science, and we muti- 
late beyond recognition Everybody's World. The two errors 
appear to be aspects of the one disease, — after the chill, the 
fever. Let us now study the fever. 

We have seen from the preceding chapters that, whether 
we are concerned with the mental or with the physical, we have 
to do with phenomena, and with nothing else. Mental 
phenomena are evidently accounted for by taking into con- 
sideration what happens to the body. In the case of physical 
phenomena the relation to sense is ignored, and phenomenon 
is connected with phenomenon in an order which we regard 
as independent. Nevertheless, some men are impelled 
to ask themselves : Is it really independent ? and, in spite of 
common sense and science, they are inclined to answer the 
question in the negative. 

They call attention to the truth that, while we ignore the 
body and the changes taking place in it, these things exist, 
notwithstanding the fact that they are ignored. The man 
who perceives the swing of the ax and the flying of the chips 
has senses, or he would not perceive them. If his senses were 
different, he would not perceive them precisely as he does. It 



n8 The World We Live In 

will be remembered that these commonplace truths have been 
dwelt upon at length in the last chapter. In this one it only 
remains to ask : What is their significance for the particular 
point at issue? Can one infer from them that everything 
that is perceived is "internal," or, in other words, mental ? 

I think it must be evident that those who raise such a ques- 
tion have been overwhelmed and thrown into confusion by the 
realization of the fact that the very stuff of the physical order 
is phenomenal stuff, and must be accepted as such. They can- 
not see how phenomenal stuff can be physical. They are im- 
pelled to lay hands violently upon it, to deny its externality, to 
call it sensation or idea, and to drag it bodily indoors. Then we 
see enacted again before us the indecorous comedy of the over- 
zealous man who begins by carrying everything else into his 
house and ends by carrying the house itself in. Aristotle, 
Kant, and many lesser men have seen that such incoherence 
must be avoided at any price. 

The best way to avoid such incoherence is to refuse to wander 
too far from Everybody's World. He who quite loses sight 
of it may find himself in a realm in which he is without a cri- 
terion by which a sensible question can be distinguished from 
one that has no significance. He may talk of "independence," 
and mean by that word an independence never actually attrib- 
uted either to minds or to physical things by mankind gener- 
ally. He may discourse of "existence," and give the word a 
significance which no man, either in common life or when en- 
gaged in scientific investigations, ever thinks of giving it. He 
may ignore the distinction of physical and mental as revealed 
in experience and accepted as the basis of certain well-devel- 
oped sciences, and he may insist that the words can only have 
some other and more recondite meaning which he sees fit to 
read into them. Having done this, he may startle us with the 
information that the physical world is not independent of us, 
but is our creature; he may inform us that physical things 



The World of the New Realism 1 1 9 

exist only when perceived, or, at least, exist at other times only 
as "possibilities of perception" ; he may virtually deny that 
they are physical, and prefer to speak of them as "sensation," 
all common use of speech and the definitions of the psychologist 
to the contrary notwithstanding. 

To escape such eccentricities of thought and expression let 
us, I say, come back to Everybody's World and take a closer 
look at it. Such an inspection may help us to decide what 
sorts of questions may properly be asked about the things in 
it, and what sorts we are not called upon either to ask or to 
answer. 

When we do come back to Everybody's World we notice, to 
begin with, that it is absolutely taken for granted, both in com- 
mon life and in science, that the only world which we are con- 
cerned to talk about at all is the world revealed in experience. 
This is so much a commonplace, that it passes without remark. 
Kant was shrewd enough to see that this is the only world re- 
garding which, in practice, any question is ever raised. 

It is, furthermore, taken for granted that the world a man 
talks about is the world revealed to him In this sense — a 
very harmless sense — the world is not independent of him. 
When we have admitted as much, we have not conceded that he 
makes the world ; we have only said that this is the world which 
he knows, or he would not be talking about it. And it is taken 
for granted by all who reflect at all that the world is not re- 
vealed in just the same terms to every creature. 

These assumptions are actually made by those who ask 
definite questions and expect an increase of information from 
the answers to them. Questions which do not fit into the 
frame of these assumptions do not appear to have any sig- 
nificance for human knowledge. "Tell me about something 
that nobody has ever perceived ; something that nobody may 
infer from what he has perceived, after the fashion in which 
we infer things unperceived, starting from something per- 



120 The World We Live In 

ceived and following the thread of analogy; something that 
cannot even be shadowed forth in the imagination, but must 
be expressed in unimaginable terms!" Does one man of 
sense make such demands upon another ? It would amount to 
saying : "Tell me something that means nothing at all ; I feel 
unsatisfied with significant answers to significant questions." 
As to a man's talking about the world in terms of the world 
as revealed to him — no one wants him to talk in any other 
way ; in all intelligent investigation it is presupposed that he 
will talk in this way Who would dream of asking the geolo- 
gist to describe for us the fauna and flora of Jurassic times in 
terms appropriate to the experience of a reptile? Any one 
who has a curiosity to know how the world may have seemed 
to a then existent reptile, may, if he will turn to the psycholo- 
gist and ask him to hazard a guess. This does not concern 
geology ; the geologist gives us an account of the world in the 
only appropriate language — in terms of the phenomena re- 
vealed to a human being. 

That the account is given in such terms may properly be 
passed over in silence, for it does not affect in the least the 
question whether the account is a true or a false one. 3 To 
dwell upon the fact that it is given in these particular terms 
would be as much out of place as it would be to dwell upon 
the nature of my senses were the question raised whether the 
head did or did not fly off of the ax which I saw used in hewing 
the tree. 

These tacit assumptions, universally made, and merely 
rendered explicit in the recognition of the world as phenomenon, 
are not regarded as in any way affecting observed distinctions 
within the phenomenal realm, such as that of physical and 
mental. There is no reason apparent why they should affect 
such distinctions, or should lead us to call the mental physical 
or the physical mental. Within the field revealed to observa- 
tion, the two orders of phenomena present themselves, and 



The World of the New Realism 1 2 1 

should be accepted as they present themselves. We should 
accord to each order its appropriate treatment. 

This implies that we should really treat the physical as phys- 
ical, and not raise questions which have no significance when 
we are dealing with physical things. Let us turn to a concrete 
instance. Suppose I ask: Did the above-discussed ax and 
its motion exist during the interval in which my eyes were 
closed ? 

Manifestly, the question cannot be intelligently answered 
unless it is an intelligent question. If I understand it as mean- 
ing : Was the ax perceived while it was not perceived ? it is 
not a question that a serious man need consider. But when 
we examine the specific cases in which, whether in com- 
mon life or in science, men ask whether this or that thing 
exists, we find that they have no intention of raising any such 
absurd question. The question which they raise is whether 
the thing may properly be regarded as belonging to the physical 
order, and, if they decide that it may, they regard its existence 
as established. Whether it does or does not belong to the 
physical order is a matter for the inductive and deductive 
logic to decide on a basis, ultimately, of a direct experience of 
the physical order. 

The words " physical existence" have absolutely no other 
significance than the one indicated. To claim that we must 
first prove that given phenomena belong to the physical order, 
and must then go on to prove something else, before we may 
affirm that they exist or have existed, is to give an arbitrary 
meaning of our own to the word "existence," and to ignore the 
common and proper significance of the term in the language 
both of the learned and the unlearned. Come back to what 
men actually do, when they are intelligently investigating 
nature. Methods of proof are adjusted to what men want to 
prove. If we wish to prove that a comet was at a given dis- 
tance from the sun at a given time, we go about it in one way : 



122 The World We Live In 

if we wish to prove that some one perceived it or will perceive 
it at a given time, we go about it in another way. The mere 
fact that we are in each case dealing with phenomena consti- 
tutes no valid reason for confusing things so different. 

In the illustration of the tree and the wood-cutter it became 
clear that two orders of phenomena are actually revealed in 
experience, and that they are revealed with equal immediacy. 
Now, he who calls things "possibilities of sensation" overlooks 
this fact. He does not recognize the physical as physical, 
and treat it as such. His phenomenal world does not divide 
itself into mental phenomena and physical phenomena; it 
consists of mental phenomena and their "possibilities" — in 
other words, their ghosts. That men do affirm every day that 
all sorts of things exist unperceived, he is compelled to admit. 
But, under the influence of the prepossession that all phenom- 
ena must necessarily be mental phenomena, he tells us that, 
when we use such statements, we can only mean that the 
things in question might be perceived. This is so palpably 
out of harmony with what we do mean, as is evidenced by all 
our dealings with phenomena, by the judgments passed unhesi- 
tatingly by the unlearned, by the actual divisions of the sci- 
ences and the utterances which fill scientific books, by the ac- 
cepted significations of the words and phrases in common use, 
that it seems remarkable that the statement should pass un- 
challenged by any thoughtful man who has a share in our com- 
mon experience. 

The plain man and the man of science accept the two orders 
as revealed, and they adjust their language to the facts. When 
they say the tree received a blow, they are speaking physically ; 
when they say there was a change in their sensations or ideas, 
they are concerned with what is not physical. To say that the 
percept of the ax struck the tree is not merely an impropriety 
of language, it is an impropriety of thought. The percept 
of the ax, as such, has no place in the physical order, and it is 



The World of the New Realism 123 

nonsense to make it function there. Men feel that this is 
nonsense, and they avoid such improprieties in actual practice. 

And if it is improper to piece out the physical order by the 
insertion of percepts, surely it is no less improper to piece it 
out by the insertion of the ghosts of percepts. Men do not, as 
a matter of fact, speak as if they wished to do this, and we must 
not read into their thought all sorts of things gratuitously. 
He who talks of the pterodactyl undoubtedly would answer, 
were he asked whether he might have seen it, had he been 
present when it existed, that he might have done so. But to 
say that he means to affirm, this when he says the creature 
existed, is not more reasonable than to maintain that he means 
to affirm that he might have seen it through blue glasses or 
with one eye shut, as, indeed, he might. 

Such "possibilities" may be left out of account. They are 
numberless, and they are irrelevant to the question whether 
a physical thing does or does not exist, has or has not existed. 
As a matter of fact, they are left out of account completely, 
when the man of science offers us proof that something exists 
now unperceived or did exist at some time in the past. 

To the question, then, Did the ax swing unperceived? 
we may unhesitatingly answer, yes ! When did it swing ? 
Where did it swing? These questions have significance, if 
we take them as inquiries respecting the particular place in the 
physical order to which given phenomena may be assigned. 
Other significance than this they have none. 

He who cares to do so can cause himself a vast amount of 
needless perplexity by proposing insignificant questions and 
seeking for them significant answers. It means something to 
ask where a given tree is. The tree is in such a field, on the out- 
skirts of such a village ; and the place of the village may be 
indicated by reference to a wider setting. But if I go on to say, 
Where is the, perhaps limitless, physical universe? I ask a 
meaningless question. There are no "where's" and no 



124 The World We Live In 

"when's" that do not gain their significance from, this physical 
universe itself. 

Should it be objected : Of course, it is foolish to ask where the 
physical universe is, if one means "where in space" ; but may 
one not ask where in another sense of the word? May I 
not ask whether the physical world I perceive is not "in my 
mind" or "in me" ? 

I answer : This too is a meaningless question. That is "in 
my mind" which is included among the phenomena referred 
to my body, and is contrasted with the physical after the fashion 
dwelt upon in the pages preceding. That I recognize anything 
at all as in my mind implies that I accept the physical as such. 
The same is implied when I speak of other minds. I may refer 
to what was in the mind of Alcibiades when he docked the tail 
of his dog ; I may dwell upon what was in the mind of the dog 
on that occasion. To the thoughts of the Greek reprobate 
and to the sufferings of the brute I may assign approximate 
dates and not be talking nonsense. But I escape talking non- 
sense only so long as I accept unequivocally the things, places, 
and dates of the physical system. 

The blunder of those who first recognize an external world, and 
then drag it in as though it were not external, lies in the failure to 
keep the physical physical, and to raise no questions regarding 
it save such as may properly be asked touching physical things. 

Those who remain upon the plane of common sense and of 
science do not fall into this blunder. They do not locate a 
town in the state of Texas, and then feel dissatisfied unless they 
have gone on to locate both the town and Texas in somebody's 
mind. A certain instinct leads them to treat the physical as 
physical, and to be content with that. They are not tempted 
to regard geography as incomplete until it has been pieced out 
with psychology. 

Those fall into the blunder who have begun to reflect, and yet 
have not reflected sufficiently. The distinction of subjective 



The World of the New Realism 125 

and objective is forced upon their attention. They recognize 
that the World is Phenomenon, and this appears to them to 
change its whole aspect — to pour moonshine over the system 
of things. Realizing that physical things are revealed to them, 
now in these terms, now in those, and to other creatures in 
terms that are, perhaps, very different, they find themselves 
bemired. Instead of reflecting that these are commonplace 
truths of which human knowledge has long taken account with- 
out losing the physical world at all, they imagine that they have 
made a discovery which justifies them in treating the physical 
as though it were not physical, and in applying to physical 
phenomena inappropriate names which would be instantly con- 
demned as inappropriate and out of place, were they employed 
on the street or in the laboratory. 

Such persons fail to see that he who raises the question how it 
is that physical things are revealed to me, now in these terms, 
now in those, or to another creature in still other terms, is not 
busying himself with physical problems at all. The latter 
can always be solved without bringing in such considerations. 
They are wholly out of place when we are inquiring whether 
any physical thing exists, or are trying to determine the time 
and place of its being. Such considerations fall within the 
realm of the psychologist, whose business it is to give us an 
account of the experience of the world enjoyed by different 
creatures, or by a given individual under varying conditions. 
In other words, they belong to the especial province of the man 
who occupies himself expressly with phenomena of the sub- 
jective order, and simply accepts the external world as a matter 
of course. 

So much for the third of the points that I have been discus- 
sing. Let us fix all three in our minds, and hold them there 
firmly : — 

1. We have as immediate an experience of physical phe- 
nomena as we have of mental. 



126 The World We Live In 

2. We must not put mental phenomena into the body, and 
thus make them physical. 

3. We must not fall into the error of supposing that physical 
phenomena, merely because they are phenomena, must be 
something mental. 

As the reader must have seen, the crucial point of my whole 
discussion is just this : Is the physical directly revealed in expe- 
rience, or is it not ? I think I have shown in this chapter that 
it is, and that it is quite possible to distinguish between expe- 
rience of the psychical and of the physical. For this I need not 
claim any extraordinary amount of credit. We are all making 
the distinction every day, without giving the matter a thought ; 
and, on the whole, we make it very well. A stately row of 
sciences stands before us, and warns us away from the path 
of error. 

And if this fundamental question is answered in the affirma- 
tive, there ought to remain no difficulties which are a genuine 
menace to the physical world, which we all instinctively accept, 
and in which we recognize that we have a place, and a modest 
one. Thus, we may freely admit that but little of the physical 
world is revealed to us directly at any given time. Does that 
imply that we may not, by inference from what is thus revealed, 
know more of it indirectly, and know it as physical ? As well 
maintain that, because the experiences which I had during 
my childhood are not experienced now, I cannot know that I 
had the experiences. We are concerned here with nothing that 
touches the distinction between physical and mental ; we are 
concerned with the general problem of representative knowl- 
edge, which touches as nearly the world of mind as the world 
of matter. 4 

Now, the philosopher who stands unequivocally with common 
thought and with science in recognizing that the physical must be 
treated as physical, and must not be transmuted into something that 
is mental, is a Realist. If he has risen to the conception that the 



The World of the New Realism 127 

World is Phenomenon, he is a Modern Realist, and is with the 
Kant of the "Refutation." 

On the other hand, he who insists that what is phenomenon is 
necessarily mental, is not with Kant, and he has lifted up his 
heel against the plain man and the man of science. That he 
has with him an ancient tradition is cold comfort. We have 
seen in Chapter II that the ancient tradition first seduced men 
into strange paths, and then robbed them of their world as 
Kant was not willing to be robbed. 

In this chapter I have developed freely the doctrine of the 
World as Phenomenon. How much of what I have written 
may I justly lay at the doors of Kant ? 

On this point opinions will differ. Nevertheless, there are 
certain things upon which there ought to be no difference of 
opinion in unprejudiced minds acquainted with the facts. 
These are : — 

1 . Kant pointed out that in all our inquiries about the world 
we are concerned only with phenomena. 

2. He claimed that we are as directly aware of physical 
phenomena as of mental. 

3. He cherished a lively antipathy to "idealism proper" 
and regarded it as an "extravagant" doctrine. 

4. He had no disposition to turn the physical phenomena 
revealed to him into ideas in his own mind. 

5. He did not identify them with ideas in some other mind. 
In this last respect Kant contrasts markedly with certain of 

his successors. Whatever one may think of the worth of the 
ingenious reasonings by which he would persuade us of the 
existence of God, we must admit that he, at least, does not buy 
a god cheap by the simple expedient of bestowing an inappro- 
priate name upon the physical world of which we have expe- 
rience. He does not argue : The World is Phenomenon, 
hence, it is Idea or Reason, and may properly be regarded as 
Divine. A certain healthy instinct led him to cling tenaciously, 



128 The World We Live In 

notwithstanding the embarrassment occasioned by the creaking 
and groaning of the elaborate machinery of the "Critique 
of Pure Reason," to the recognition of the fact that the world 
is just the world, and that, when we call it "phenomenon," we 
are only pointing out that it is the world we know. If a 
physical system of things is revealed, then, by all means, let 
us accept it and treat it as such. 

And if we do accept it and treat it as such, the many aspects 
or revelations of the world discussed in the last chapter are not 
left at loose ends and without intelligible relation to each other. 
They belong to one world-system, and may be assigned their 
place. Pharaoh's dream, the ambition of Alexander, the re- 
morse of Augustine, the learning of St. Thomas, the thoughts 
which have passed through my mind in writing this chapter, the 
sensations of the man I see across the way, the psychic life of 
the dog that lies at my feet or of the fly that buzzes in the sum- 
mer air — these do not constitute a chaos. The attention that 
these things and such as these have attracted from men, the 
treatment which has actually been accorded to them, indicate 
that they are given a place in an orderly world. Let one try 
to assign them such a place, let one try to make intelligible 
what is meant by their standing in relation to each other, and 
let one do this while consistently ignoring the physical world of 
things, times, and places ! The attempt is hopeless. 



CHAPTER X 

THE WORLD WITHOUT AND THE WORLD WITHIN 

There is nothing to prevent a man from being a realist and, 
at the same time, a haloed saint ; on the other hand, a man may- 
be a realist and yet quite capable of stealing a sheep. Every- 
body who accepts a World Without and does not try to drag 
it "inside," turning it into his own idea or the idea of some one 
else, is a realist of some sort. There are those — and they 
comprise much the larger number — who are unconscious 
realists, recognizing the physical world naively, and laying 
claim to no philosophical doctrine. There are those who are 
realists consciously and after serious reflection. 

When we call a man a realist, we distinguish him from the 
idealist, but we do not completely describe him. He may be 
an Old-fashioned Realist, and hold to the Duplicate World 
discussed in Chapter II; or he may be a New Realist, and 
accept the World as Phenomenon. In either case, while 
insisting strenuously that the external world must be kept 
external, he may feel impelled to ask himself rather anxiously 
just what it is reasonable to regard as existing in the external 
world, and what should be regarded as existing only in the 
mind. 

We have seen (Chapter II) that, very early in the history 
of speculative thought, men came to the conclusion that things 
are not precisely as they seem. The man who walked the 
streets of Abdera or of Athens saw the objects about him stand 
out sharply contrasted in color, bathed in the light of the 
blazing sun. He was told by the sages that nothing really 
existed outside of him save atoms and void space. He 
k 129 



130 The World We Live In 

gathered up the splendid vision and drew it within, becoming, 
in his enlightenment, the forerunner of such as, in later ages, 
distinguished between the primary qualities of bodies and the 
secondary, attributing the former to the objects themselves, 
and declaring the latter to be " nothing in the objects them- 
selves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by 
their primary qualities." To the mind of the English 
reader there will at once occur, in this connection, Locke's 
classical denudation of the physical world: "The particular 
bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire, or snow, 
are really in them, whether any one's senses perceive them or 
no ; and therefore they may be called real qualities, because 
they really exist in those bodies ; but light, heat, whiteness or 
coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in 
manna. Take away the sensation of them ; let not the eyes 
see light or colors, nor the ears hear sounds ; let the palate not 
taste, nor the nose smell ; and all colors, tastes, odors, and sounds 
as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are 
reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts." * 
Locke has scraped the world — he has taken off certain of 
the properties men generally are inclined to allow it, but he 
has permitted it to retain certain others. We saw in Chapter 
II that it is quite possible to go farther in this direction. That 
the plain man, ancient or modern, is a realist, we must admit ; 
that Locke and such as he are realists of a sort appears as un- 
deniable. But what shall we call the man who scours the world 
with such energy that he leaves it with no surface at all ? How 
shall we label the philosopher to whom it has become a mere 
" Thing-in-itself " or an "Unknowable"? Of his world we 
must say, that his breath has passed over it, and it is gone, and 
the place thereof shall know it no more — indeed, its place has 
vanished with it. Such a man is not a realist. He is one 
standing in the afterglow of a realism which has dipped below 
the horizon and has disappeared. 



The World Without and the World Within 131 

In this chapter I shall not dwell upon the Old-fashioned 
Realist. As he does not appear to have any logical right to 
his Duplicate World, but may fairly be said to have stolen 
it, we may leave him to put into it or to take out of it what he 
pleases. When we are talking about a world which lies, by 
hypothesis, wholly beyond our experience, verification seems to 
be out of the question, and there is no natural limit to dispute. 

Let us turn to the New Realist, to whom the world is the 
World as Phenomenon. We have seen that he must recog- 
nize something revealed in experience as external, or he is left 
without any world at all. He may, however, ask in all se- 
riousness : What sort of phenomena may I properly call exter- 
nal, and what must I regard as internal and subjective ? It is 
conceivable that among New Realists there should be a differ- 
ence of opinion upon the point at issue. 

In considering this problem, let us cast a critical glance upon 
the things about us as they appear to be revealed in our expe- 
rience. That we have experience of things and of the changes 
which take place in them it is hard not to believe, and it seems 
indubitable that things are revealed under a variety of 
guises by the several senses. 

The illustration of the woodman and the tree had reference 
especially to the sense of sight, but we become aware of things 
and their qualities in other ways as well. I can close my eyes 
and pass my finger over the surface of the table before me ; I 
can listen to the sounds wafted from the bell in the distant 
tower; I can reject as suspicious the morsel of game that I 
was about to put into my mouth ; I can complain that salt has 
been put into my coffee instead of sugar. 

If I examine common speech to discover how men usually 
treat the qualities of things revealed by the senses, I find that 
they have no hesitation in referring many sorts of qualities to 
external things, and in speaking as though these qualities were 
quite as external as the things and quite as independent of us. 



132 The World We Live In 

Thus, no one hesitates to say that the coat of the woodman is 
brown and the leaves of the tree are green ; that the surface of 
my table is smooth, hard, and continuous, as it feels, not per- 
forated with holes ; that the sound of the bell is very loud in the 
belfry, but is muffled here in my room ; that the rose is fra- 
grant, and that the apple is sweet or sour. 

That men do express themselves in this way cannot be matter 
of dispute. They talk as though not merely texture and hard- 
ness, but colors, sounds, odors, and sweetness or saltness, as 
well, had a place in the physical world, and were not fugitive 
existences that spring into being in the mind on the making 
of certain physical contacts in a world in which none of these 
qualities have any existence. And if we ask men how they 
are in the habit of thinking of such things, we shall find that 
the expressions which they employ fairly represent their 
thought. To them, a smooth surface is smooth, a red book 
is red, a rose is fragrant, sugar is sweet. This habit of thought 
is not confined wholly to the unlearned. As I look about the 
room in which I am writing, and reflect upon the way in which 
I am impressed by what meets my view, I discover that I 
have no disposition to split the chair against the wall opposite 
me into a colored apparition "within" and a colorless form 
"without." The things which I seem to perceive around me 
do not present themselves as the pallid specters one might 
expect to meet could one penetrate to the colorless external 
world of Locke's "Essay." When I talk about a chair, I 
think of a chair as it looks and feels. It is this chair that pre- 
sents itself as outside of me, in space, against my wall ; I see 
it to be colored, I can approach it, I can touch it. Why rob it 
of one quality rather than of another ? 

Men do, then, talk as though colors, odors, and such, 
actually belonged to things ; and even those who have had the 
pleasure of reading the philosophers are apt to share their 
habits of thought and speech. Shall we hold that the scholar 



The World Without and the World Within 133 

who thus falls into line with the plain man has succumbed to a 
weakness, natural to the unreflective, but not to be justified 
before the bar of reason ? Shall we advise him to adjust him- 
self to accepted modes of speech as a matter of convenience, 
but to avoid thinking of such a quality as color as really out- 
side and independent of perception ? There are certain points 
to which, before we read him this lecture, we should give care- 
ful consideration. 

In the first place we should reflect upon the fact that, al- 
though it is not worth while to ask the plain man to describe 
what he is doing when he is making his distinctions, it may very 
well be that the distinctions which he actually makes are real 
and important ones, and that the language in which he marks 
them is entirely justified. The distinction between what is 
or happens in the external world and what is or happens in 
ourselves is one which concerns human life very nearly. As 
we have seen in the illustration of the woodman and the tree, 
we are constantly making use of the distinction, and it would 
result in measureless confusion did we suddenly find ourselves 
unable to distinguish between subjective and objective, changes 
in our percepts and changes in things. Since the distinction is 
so significant and so useful, it would be surprising if men, on 
the whole, made it badly. That confusion is possible some- 
times is admitted on the street as well as in the laboratory; 
but it is accepted that confusion is to be regarded as the excep- 
tion, and not as the rule. 

In the second place, it is worthy of note that science thinks 
the thoughts and speaks the language of the plain man, when 
science is concerned with those things that fall under the 
cognizance of the senses. Sometimes science gives us infor- 
mation regarding what does not and cannot present itself to 
the senses at all. But when it is dealing with the things 
that we find about us in common life, it speaks of them as we 
all do. 



134 The World We Live In 

We are told, for example, that : "Corpuscles cause chemical 
changes in certain bodies on which they fall. Thus, rock 
salt takes a beautiful violet color, which, unless exposed to 
moisture, it will retain for years. Lithium chloride is remark- 
ably sensitive to the impact of corpuscles. If a beam of cor- 
puscles be slowly moved over the salt by a magnet, the path of 
the beam traces out a colored band on the surface of the salt." 
Or, again, we hear that: "Becquerel rays cause chemical ac- 
tion. Emitted from radium they will discolor paper, cause 
glass to take a violet tint, turn oxygen into ozone, yellow 
phosphorus into red phosphorus, mercury perchloride into 
calomel and will decompose iodoform." 

We hear, then, even when we listen to the man of science, 
that, under given circumstances, rock salt takes a violet color 
which it may retain for years ; that a colored band may be 
produced on a lithium salt ; that, in the presence of radium, 
paper will be discolored, glass take a violet tint, and yellow 
phosphorus become red phosphorus. This is the language of 
one talking about things outside, not about mental phenomena. 
The expressions used, which carry an unmistakable suggestion, 
serve the purposes of science, as well as the uses of common life. 
Did they not serve their purpose well, such expressions would 
be discarded. 

This brings me to my third point. We have seen that those 
who insist that such qualities as color must be in the mind and 
not outside cannot fall back upon the common experience of 
mankind, for its testimony seems to be against them ; nor can 
they urge the involuntary admissions of the scientific, for the 
scientific, when dealing with the things we perceive about us, 
talk as if these things were just what they seem to be, and 
tricked out with all sorts of qualities. They seem, then, com- 
pelled to take their stand on the position that there is a cer- 
tain incongruity in the external existence of such phenomena 
as colors, sounds, odors. 



The World Without and the World Within 



o^ 



Certainly no man is born with the knowledge that it is un- 
natural for such phenomena to exist outside. He who is 
assured of that fact has either made that discovery for him- 
self, or he has picked up the information from some one else 
— presumably from some philosopher. In any case we can- 
not permit his assertion to pass unchallenged. It does not 
strike most men as unnatural that a red book should really 
be red or a rose really fragrant. It does not seem monstrous 
that the color of the book should fade through exposure to sun- 
light. He who maintains that such things are contrary to 
nature should be compelled to prove his point. And any 
intelligent discussion of the question whether such phenomena 
as we are considering should or should not be regarded as exist- 
ing outside, seems to bring us back unavoidably to the pre- 
liminary question : What have we a right to mean when we say 
that anything whatever exists outside ? Until the meaning of 
the word "outside" is made quite clear, we are evidently wan- 
dering in the dark and talking at random. 

What is meant by the external world and the existence of 
any phenomenon in the external world, I examined at length 
in the last chapter. I shall beg the reader to bear in mind what 
was said there ; and, in the light of it, I shall inquire whether 
there is any reason why such phenomena as colors, sounds, 
odors, should not be external in the only sense of the word in 
which we have any reason to regard anything at all as physical 
and external. But first I shall set up a hypothetical scare- 
crow, to warn us away effectively from ground upon which we 
should not allow ourselves to settle. 

Let us suppose that Descartes was right in assigning to the 
mind — I need not here pause to discuss the word — a seat 
in the pineal gland in the brain. Let us suppose that every- 
thing internal, sensations, percepts, memories, judgments, 
emotions, and the like, is unequivocally somewhere in the 
gland ; in it, as papers are in this desk, or as chairs are in this 



136 The World We Live In 

room. Let us suppose that the gland, the brain in which it has 
its place, the nerves, the sense-organs, and the whole physical 
world to which such things belong, are to be regarded as lying 
around the spot in which mental phenomena are segregated. 
Finally, let us make the monstrous supposition that we have 
discovered some ingenious way of inspecting directly both the 
mental phenomena in the gland and the physical world in which 
we have located their diminutive prison. 

Under these circumstances, we find the significance of the 
words "inside" and "outside" very easy to grasp. "Inside" 
means "in the particular spot " ; "outside " means "in the space 
beyond it." Our inspection reveals that what is within is not 
precisely like what is without. For one thing, colors, sounds, 
odors, tastes, have their place only in the little world of ideas. 
What is without has no color, does not emit sound, is odorless, 
is tasteless. Nevertheless, when something happens outside, 
there appear in the gland, among the ideas, phenomena quite 
different in kind from anything outside. The imprisoned soul 
we are discussing seems to hear the ringing of a bell, it seems to 
see the rosy light of dawn, it deludes itself with the thought 
that the scent of the roses is blown when the breeze of the 
morning moves. It decks a dark and silent world with a man- 
tle of light and of harmony, and it rejoices in the beauty of 
what it has itself unwittingly called into being. 

What a travesty of human experience of the mind and the 
world is furnished us in this picture ! Yet those who read the 
works of the philosophers know that not a few of them have 
suggested to us that we should conceive of the World Without 
and the World Within somewhat after this fashion. This, too, 
in the face of the patent fact that, in all our actual experience 
of our minds and of physical things, there is nothing in the 
faintest degree suggesting it. We do not perceive our ideas 
to be "inside," in this extraordinary sense of the word, or in 
any sense at all approaching it. We seem to perceive meadow 



The World Without and the World Within 137 

and grove, river and mountain, where they are and as they are.* 
We are plainly doing violence to our experience when we aban- 
don the common light of day, in which as plain men we have 
heretofore walked, for this twilight of the gods, in which all 
values are re-valued and most values are lost. Little wonder 
that we are advised to speak as do other men, whatever may be 
our private convictions touching the world and our knowledge 
of it! 

Away with the unnatural picture, and back to the physical 
and the mental as they appear to be unmistakably revealed in 
our experience. In the illustration of the woodcutter and 
the tree, we saw that there was no great difficulty in deciding 
whether we were concerned with a change in things or with a 
change in ideas. If we approach the man and the tree, there 
is a change in our experiences, but we do not say that the things 
have changed, we say that they look different from different 
positions. If the relation of the sense-organ to the objects 
remains unchanged, we say that the changes which take 
place — the swing of the ax, the flying of the chip — are 
changes in things. Evidently, inside and outside, in the mind 
and in the physical world, are not here expressions equivalent 
to in the body and outside of the body. Just as evidently, the 
man who distinguishes between a change in his percepts and a 
change in things does not split what he perceives at any moment 
into two parts, drawing one part "within " and leaving the other 
part "without." When we reflect upon what it means to 
refer phenomena to the external world or to refer them to the 
mind, as illustrated in the very commonplace experience which 
I have instanced, we see that there seems to be no reason what- 
ever why colors should not be as susceptible of this dual refer- 
ence as any other phenomena. 

As I approach the woodcutter from a distance, the color of 
his coat does not appear to me just the same at every stage of 

* See Chapter XI, pp. 157 ff. 



138 The World We Live In 

my progress. When I stand near him, I see clearly that it is 
brown, and I have a nice perception of the particular shade of 
brown which belongs to it. But it does not occur to me to 
say that the coat has turned brown as I walked ; nor would it 
occur to me to say that the tree which seemed blue at a dis- 
tance has turned green on my approach. On the other hand, 
I have no hesitation in saying that some objects change their 
color. The apples which hang upon the bough outside of my 
window are redder than they were a week ago. They have 
turned red. The garment I sent to the dyer comes back to 
me different in color. The iridescent hues of the soap bubble 
keep shifting, and I do not attribute their change to my organs 
of vision or to the relation of these to the airy globe which 
shines before me. 

We may reason in the same way about sounds, odors, and 
tastes. It is not merely a concession to common usage, but it 
is a just recognition of familiar distinctions, to say : that the 
bell rings loudly in the belfry, although the sounds seem 
muffled here where I sit ; that the sounds are riot annihilated 
when I stop my ears with my fingers ; that, when the tumul- 
tuous clamor comes to an end, and the bell is heard to toll 
slowly, the fact is to be attributed to changes in the outside 
world, and does not find its explanation in any reference to my 
organs of hearing. 

We notice the scent of flowers in the room through which we 
are passing, and we approach the vase which contains them. 
The odor is more noticeable ; and, as we bend over the vase, 
it is more pronounced still. No one judges that the scent of 
the flowers has become more powerful. Nor is any thoughtful 
man likely to decide that flowers lose their scent when he suffers 
from a cold in the head, and regain it when he has applied to 
himself the proper remedies. A flower may lose its scent, or 
we may be so circumstanced that we cannot perceive the scent 
that it has. In most instances it does not seem impossible to 
decide which is the case. 



The World Without and the World Within 139 

Nor is it otherwise with the sweetness, saltness, sourness or 
bitterness of substances which we put into our mouths. He 
who has been eating sugar may declare that the sup of tea 
which he takes has no sweetness at all ; just as he who enters a 
darkened room from the sun-illumined street may declare that 
he is enveloped in total darkness. The effect produced upon 
our perception of tastes by the fluctuation in the condition of 
our bodies was a subject of comment at least two thousand 
years ago. Nevertheless, it has been quite possible for man- 
kind to classify substances according to their tastes, and even 
to form intelligent judgments as to the degree of their sweet- 
ness or saltness. 

There seems, then, no reason why we should not distinguish 
between inner and outer, subjective and objective, when we are 
dealing with colors, sounds, odors, and tastes. In fact, we 
every day do thus distinguish, and the language in which we 
express ourselves is rather accurately adjusted to the distinc- 
tions which we actually find it necessary to make. He who 
enters a darkened room does not assume that he cannot be 
seen, merely because he cannot see ; he who hears no words 
pronounced does not necessarily take that bare fact as evi- 
dence that no one is talking and no one is hearing ; he who buys 
flowers to send to his lady does not overlook the distinction 
between scented and scentless, merely because, in his present 
condition, he cannot distinguish by smell a rose from a dahlia ; 
the thoughtful host leaves out of consideration the fact that he 
has a disordered body, and he chooses wines and viands on the 
assumption that the tastes of things differ and that these differ- 
ences can be distinguished by men generally. 

The distinction between what belongs to the object in ques- 
tion, and what must find its explanation in us or in our relation 
to the object, is not affected by such considerations as that the 
colors of things are not independent of the light under which 
they are seen, and are constantly changing. We call a cer- 



140 The World We Live In 

tain book red, and we even specify the shade of red ; we say 
that snow is white. But the passing of a cloud sensibly modi- 
fies the color of every object in my room, and the peak which 
stood out white under the noon sun turns pink at sunset. 
These are objective changes of color. Nevertheless, we con- 
tinue to call the book red and snow white; and even after 
the shades of night have fallen and all things have disappeared 
in indistinguishable darkness, we talk as though each object 
had its color and the one color. Manifestly, we are here con- 
cerned with matters of convenience and convention. In 
each instance cited there has been an objective change, but it 
is not necessary to indicate every objective change of color 
by giving a distinct name to the thing perceived. Some 
changes have little significance, and may be allowed to pass 
unnoted. This does not mean that objects have no color. 
It is, however, possible to urge a point which seems much 
more worthy of consideration. We have seen that, in the only 
sense of the word "external" that seems to be significant, 
colors, sounds, odors, and tastes appear to have as good a right 
to be considered external as have any other phenomena. 
Nevertheless, it may be claimed, all the facts adduced are com- 
patible with the doctrine that they are only mental signs of 
something external, signs which are to be depended on, and 
which unfailingly indicate that something is taking place in 
the physical world, but which cannot themselves be said to 
belong to the physical world at all. Admitting that both 
common sense and science find their purposes best served by 
talking as though rock salt really could take on and retain a 
violet tint, and that such language is, hence, justified, is it not, 
at least, conceivable that all such expressions may need a cer- 
tain interpretation if misunderstanding is to be avoided? 
A bank note is as good as gold for all practical purposes, if it 
truly represents the amount of gold indicated by the figures 
printed upon it. One makes no financial blunder in treating it 



The World Without and the World Within 141 

as though it were the thing it represents. And if such a 
quality as color be but an inner sign of something itself exter- 
nal, what matter whether we mark in speech the fact that it is 
a mere sign, or whether we proceed with our discussion in in- 
difference to the fact ? If the relation between sign and thing 
signified be dependable, our accounts need not be thrown into 
disorder. Nevertheless, say those who reason thus, paper is 
not a metal, and it is an error to suppose that it is gold ; like- 
wise, it is an error to suppose that colors are external. 

I might answer all this briefly by pointing out that it seems 
reasonable to call external any phenomena to which will apply 
satisfactorily the only criterion of externality that we have. 
But so strong is the prejudice against the externality of the so- 
called secondary qualities of bodies, on the part of certain phi- 
losophers, at least, and so natural does the objection brought 
forward above seem to many persons, that I shall give the mat- 
ter a more detailed consideration. 

At the outset, I must call attention to the fact that he who 
thus lays emphasis upon internal signs and external things 
signified by them seems forced to maintain that no phenomenon 
directly presented in our experience is to be regarded as exter- 
nal at all. The surface of my writing table looks colored, it 
seems to fill continuously the space that it occupies, it feels to 
the touch smooth. Why not attribute all these qualities to 
the constitution of my organs of sense, and say that it is not 
really colored, does not really fill space continuously, and is not 
smooth, but is rather rough and uneven ? So much one may 
say even without having recourse to the ultimate constituents 
of things as the chemist and the physicist describe them. 

One may, however, go farther. No man has a right, on the 
basis of this or that philosophic theory, to reject the accepted 
facts of science or what seem to be legitimate inferences from 
those facts. For a century the science of chemistry has been 
familiar with the atom, and has conceived of the material 



142 The World We Live In 

things which surround us as composed of these minute and 
imperceptible entities in their various combinations. The 
most recent physical researches have familiarized us with the 
concept of the corpuscle or electron, that exceedingly minute 
constituent of the atom, the nature and behavior of which 
are supposed to account for the properties of the atom, just as 
the nature and behavior of the atom are supposed to account 
for the properties of the things we see and feel. 

If these doctrines of the constitution of matter are true — 
and certainly the layman has no right to impugn their truth 
— must we not maintain that no phenomenon directly revealed 
to the sense is to be regarded as external, but that the only 
external world is the world of atoms and corpuscles and their 
motions ? Now, we have long heard of atomic weights and 
volumes, and recently we have been hearing something of the 
masses and motions of corpuscles ; but on the subject of atomic 
and corpuscular colors, smells, and tastes, we appear to be 
left without information. What if it should turn out that these 
minute things to which science has introduced us are not 
colored, sonorous, odorous, sapid ? Should we not be forced to 
conclude that, although something is external and can be 
described with more or less accuracy, yet the secondary quali- 
ties under discussion must be denied externality? This 
sounds very Lockian. Everything we directly perceive is 
dragged into the mind ; what is outside has some qualities more 
or less resembling qualities that the things we seem to per- 
ceive seem to have ; but certain other qualities of the things 
that we have heretofore regarded as external are wholly lack- 
ing in the world of matter. 

This position has only a superficial plausibility. It may be 
effectually refuted by two quite distinct arguments. Let us 
consider the first. 

I beg the reader to follow me in imagining the man who is 
inclined to degrade tables, chairs, woodcutters, and trees to 



The World Without and the World Within 143 

the rank of mere appearance, and who is disposed to exalt 
atoms and corpuscles, to become suddenly endowed with a 
sense or senses much more acute than any he now possesses. 
Suppose that he has become directly aware of the existence and 
motions of atoms, as he was once aware of the colored balls 
thrown into the air by the conjurer. Perhaps he would, at 
first, be inclined to flatter himself with the thought that he now 
perceives the external world as it is, whereas he was before 
fed upon appearances and nothing more. Nevertheless, if 
our figure has any real meaning, if we are still talking about 
sense and about things, in any intelligible signification of those 
words, is it not inevitable that he should begin to ask himself 
the questions that arose in his mind before ? A given change 
makes itself perceptible to him. Is this an external change, 
or is there a change only in his perceptions ? Why should 
we assume that there is no problem of internal and external 
to one dwelling in the land of atoms ? 

The questionings of a man in this position might be made 
more insistent by the discontent of a scientific companion, 
who carried over to the new life memories of passages contained 
in the books written for and read by ordinary mortals. "I 
am as sick of atoms," complains the promoted scientist, "as 
ever the Lady of Shalott was of shadows. Are we never to 
have a glimpse of things as they really are outside ? Remem- 
ber what Lodge said of the relation of a corpuscle to the atom 
of which it forms a part." 

In the illustration referred to an atom of hydrogen is repre- 
sented by an ordinary church, and the corpuscles constituting 
it are represented by about one thousand grains of sand, 
darting in all directions, or rotating with inconceivable velocity, 
and filling the whole interior of the church with their motions. 
Our atom-seer perceives nothing at all like this, and he is com- 
pelled to admit that, if atoms really are like this, he does not 
perceive atoms as they are. He may conclude that what he 



144 The World We Live I 71 

perceives is wholly "inside," and that what is "outside" is 
not the atom, but the corpuscle. 

Let the man attain the third degree, and become capable 
of a direct inspection of corpuscles. If we keep to the analogy 
of sense and perception at all — if, that is, our words have a 
meaning — what is to prevent the old problem from breaking 
out again? Acuteness of sense has nothing to do with the 
matter. The distinction of inner and outer remains the same 
for all degrees of dullness and acuteness. No one claims that 
all the experiences of a myopic man are internal, and that only 
he who enjoys good vision can see external things. No one 
supposes that what I now see, as I turn my eyes about, is all 
internal, but that what I see when I apply my eye to the 
microscope is an outside thing. And there is no better rea- 
son for maintaining that the objects I perceive in this room are 
internal or mental, but that such things as atoms are not. 

Whether we are dealing with the things we perceive in our 
everyday life, with the atom, with the corpuscle, or with 
something beyond, perhaps, the ether, we are confronted with 
precisely the same question : In the particular instance before 
us, what may we properly regard as physical, and what must 
we refer to ourselves and call mental ? Nor is there the slight- 
est reason for assuming that we should decide the matter in 
one way in the case of tables, chairs, trees, and woodcutters, 
and in another way in the case of such things as atoms and cor- 
puscles. If, then, we are talking about a tree and a wood- 
cutter, let us keep to the tree and the woodcutter, and not 
wander off to something else, which, we will find, has troubles 
of its own, which it is proper to consider when the thing in 
question is considered. Here we may keep to the tree and the 
man, and may ask : How do we distinguish between the things 
and our ideas of the things? Can we distinguish between a 
change in the things and a change merely in our percepts? 
We have seen that we can do so, that men generally do so, and 



The World Without and the World Within 145 

that it is possible to do so without consulting either the chemist 
or the physicist. 

And now for my second argument. We all admit that atoms 
and corpuscles are not directly perceived. Yet we do not hesi- 
tate to attribute to them position in space and motion in space. 
Not in some unknown and unknowable space with which the 
space of which we are directly aware has no intelligible rela- 
tion ; but in the very space in which exist the things we per- 
ceive about us. I hold my pen here in my fingers, and I look 
at it. I believe that a certain swarm of atoms exists, and that 
the pen which I perceive guarantees its existence. Where is 
the pen ? In a definite place determined by its relations to 
other material things which are also perceived. Where are 
the atoms that I think of as composing the pen? No man 
of science would locate them on the other side of the moon or 
in one of the satellites of Jupiter. No man of science would 
believe in them if they could not be located at all. I follow 
common sense and science in referring them to the space oc- 
cupied by this pen. 

But, suppose I conclude that the pen which I directly per- 
ceive is wholly inside me — that it is a mere mental representa- 
tive of something beyond. Where are, then, the atoms? I 
beg that the lesson of the last chapter be held clearly in mind. 
Unless something external is perceived directly, nothing at all 
can be known to be external, and to talk of its position and mo- 
tion, or of the time during which it undergoes its changes, is 
simply absurd. Atoms located in the unknown and vibrating 
at no time that can be specified are not the atoms which, as 
science tells me, compose this pen. The only claim which the 
latter have to a position in space is based upon the similar 
claim urged by the pen. Draw the pen inside, deny that it 
exists in space, and you cut loose from its moorings and render 
wholly insignificant the space occupied by the atoms. 

If, then, anything is external, the very things that I per- 



146 The World We Live In 

ceive about me are external. Their qualities are physical 
qualities, not sensations ; they may properly be said to belong to 
things and to have their place in the external world. There is 
no reason to discriminate against colors, sounds, odors, tastes. 
If we apply to such phenomena the tests by which we in any 
instance distinguish between what is in things and what is in 
us, we find that it is quite possible to distinguish between 
objective and subjective, what should be attributed to things 
and what should be attributed to some change in the sense or 
to some change in the relation of the sense to the things in 
question. We may, then, without being shamefaced about 
the matter or calling it a concession to human weakness, say 
frankly that the flower is blue and has a scent. This is just as 
true as it is that the bud grows and the flower unfolds its petals. 
The so-called secondary qualities of bodies do belong to the 
bodies, as they seem to. The language of common life and 
of science does not need correction at the hands of the philoso- 
pher. My chair there against the wall has size and shape, 
and it has also color. The size and shape cannot properly be 
said to be in me ; neither can the color. 

But what of atoms and corpuscles ? If they exist, they are 
external, too. Not more really external than are the things 
revealed by our senses, but just as truly external, and external 
in the same sense. It is the only sense in which anything can 
be physical and external at all. 

Have these atoms and corpuscles the qualities we have been 
discussing? In attributing to them position and motion in 
space, we make them not absolutely unlike the things we see, 
feel, hear, taste, and smell ; but may we attribute to them the 
other properties of such things, and claim that an increase in 
the acuteness of the senses which we actually possess might 
reveal their presence ? To this I answer, it will, perhaps, be 
time enough to ask for a detailed description of atoms and 
corpuscles when men know more about them than they seem 



The World Without and the World Within 14.J 

to know at present. As they are not chairs and tables, it may 
very well be that they are without some of the qualities which 
we perceive chairs and tables to have. This would, of course, 
have no bearing on the question whether such qualities are 
possessed by chairs and tables. The question of the qualities 
to be attributed to the minutest constituents of material things 
is a question for the physicist. He may find good reason for 
maintaining that an electron cannot be colored, just as he has 
found good reason for holding that a bell cannot ring in a world 
without an atmosphere. 

It is not for the philosopher to dogmatize touching matters 
which lie within the realm of the chemist or of the physicist. 
But he is within his right when he points out that the man who 
will talk intelligibly of anything must remain within the sphere 
of phenomena. We do not leave that sphere when we neglect 
the consideration of colors, sounds, odors, and tastes, and 
occupy ourselves with the geometrical properties of things, 
discourse of masses and motions. We do not leave it when we 
pass from the consideration of the things of everyday life to 
the consideration of atoms, or from the study of atoms to that 
of corpuscles. Everywhere, if our speech is to remain signifi- 
cant at all, we must deal with phenomena, always with phe- 
nomena. And the land from which we set out upon every 
voyage of discovery is Everybody's World, the world of 
phenomena physical and mental with which we are all familiar. 
We must be credulous, indeed, if we allow the hardy mariners 
who return from visits to other shores, where things are more or 
less different, to persuade us that the trees which we perceive 
to be green are not green, and that our roses are not fragrant. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW REALISM AND EVERYBODY'S WORLD 

It is now time for us to see whether the New Realist has 
occupied himself with getting a clearer view of the world in 
which we actually live, and to which we all pay the substantial 
tribute of involuntary recognition, or has, after soaring on the 
wings of the poetic imagination in search of worlds which are 
nowhere in particular, returned to relate to us his dreams. The 
pot of gold unearthed at the foot of the rainbow must submit 
to the test of the laboratory before it can be passed from hand 
to hand as an acceptable medium of exchange. Is the world of 
the New Realism none other than Everybody's World with its 
dark places lighted up ? Or is it a strange country that is offered 
us? one whose milk, honey, and hypertrophied agricultural 
products may indemnify us for the loss of the old home to 
which we are adjusted and which impresses us as being real ? 

Let us summarize. It is a commonplace of Everybody's 
World that there exist external material things, the qualities 
and the relations of which we can directly perceive. It is be- 
lieved that these things are not in our minds, and may not 
properly be called sensations, percepts, or ideas, but exist con- 
tinuously and independently of us. The suggestion that we 
create these things in knowing them would be scouted as ab- 
surd. It is recognized that they form a system, and that, by 
reference to this system, individual things and happenings may 
be assigned a place and date. 

Each of these features of Everybody's World is accepted 
without reservation by the New Realist. He does not obliter- 
ate them, he emphasizes them. When he finds the plain man 
148' 



The New Realism and Everybody s World 149 

and the man of science lending an ear to the wisdom of the 
serpent and inclining to the belief that the things which ap- 
pear to belong to the external world cannot really be there, but 
must be inside themselves, he furnishes an antidote to the 
poison and brings them back to common sense. This he does in 
making more clear what they had only half recognized ; namely, 
that "inside" does not mean "in the body," and that what we 
perceive directly are not little copies or images of the external 
things in question, but are the very things themselves. He 
points out that the supposed difficulty that plagues them is a 
fictitious one. An ancient misconception led men to believe 
that things throw off little copies of themselves, that these 
penetrate to some region of the body, and that these alone are 
directly known. This is crude; this is palpably absurd; 
this is contrary to experienced fact. When it is once made clear 
what may properly be meant by "external" and "internal," 
we are relieved of the modern shadow of this ancient incubus, 
and we may come back to the natural belief that we are as 
directly conscious of external things as we are of anything 
whatever. Moreover, we may with a clear conscience accept 
as external the things we actually perceive, with just the quali- 
ties and relations which we perceive them to have. We are 
not compelled to scrape them of their qualities before we ac- 
cept them ; nor must we, to the detriment of the things we per- 
ceive, give the preference to certain other things, with, per- 
haps, other qualities, which, whether they do or do not exist, 
certainly no one has as yet perceived to exist. 

As to the independent existence of material things, the New 
Realist is its stoutest champion. He calls attention to the fact 
that no man in his senses means, when he asserts that physical 
things are independent of perception, that said physical things 
are not such physical things as he has perceived, or that they 
have no connection with what he has perceived. The only 
question that can interest him is : Must such things as he 



150 The World We Live In 

perceives lapse into nothingness if unperceived? The New 
Realist points out that a doubt on the subject never arises in 
the mind of any one save through a misconception. It is not 
natural to think that tables and chairs are of so feeble and 
dependent a nature that they need the support of a bystander 
if they are not to vanish like smoke. Men do not spontaneously 
arrive at such conclusions. They are not met with in common 
life ; they are nowhere to be found in science. But once 
suggest to a man that tables and chairs are not what he thought 
them, but should be called sensations or ideas, and they become 
to him wet tissue-paper. He is ready to exclaim : "Who ever 
heard of an independent shadow ? If my sensations and ideas 
are not in my mind, where are they ? As well discuss an inde- 
pendent toothache as an independent table." 

From this gratuitous degradation and pauperization of 
physical things the New Realist would save the man of native 
good sense who is in danger of slipping. Some things are 
perceived to exist in the physical world; some are believed 
to exist in spite of the fact that we do not perceive them. 
They are believed to exist on the strength of evidence, and this 
evidence is subject to the usual canons of the inductive and de- 
ductive logic. 

Whether such unperceived things do or do not exist can in 
most instances better be determined by the man of special 
knowledge than by the philosopher. One can judge perfectly 
well of the evidence without reflecting upon the precise signifi- 
cance of the words " physical existence." Those who are the 
most occupied with the problem of what does or does not exist 
in the external world, and can give us the most information 
worthy of attention, commonly reflect little upon this ques- 
tion. That does not prevent them from knowing very well 
that it is one thing to prove that something exists or has existed, 
and quite another to prove that some one perceives it or might 
have perceived it. 



The New Realism and Everybody's World 151 

All that the philosopher can do is to make more clear and ex- 
plicit what the words "independent physical existence" may 
properly mean. He may point out that he who proves that 
something exists in the physical world is furnishing evidence 
that certain phenomena have their place in the objective order 
of phenomena with a part of which we have a direct acquaint- 
ance in perception. This added information does not compel 
the plain man and the man of science to reverse their judgments. 
On the contrary, it makes it plain that the distinctions which 
they have drawn are entirely justified, and it ought to induce 
them to turn a deaf ear to those who would mislead them. 

Thus, the New Realist accepts frankly the continuously 
existing independent physical things of Everybody's World, 
and he defends them against attack. He sees clearly that the 
only space and time in which we ever try to place and date 
anything are the space and time borrowed from this physical 
system. Seeing this, he recognizes it as the very backbone 
of the orderly world in which we live, and he warns men off 
from assaults upon it. 

To return to our summary. It is a commonly recognized 
truth that, had we no senses, we should not perceive anything. 
It is well known that things appear different as revealed to 
different senses, and as their relations to a single sense vary. 
We all accept the fact that there are sentient creatures of many 
orders, equipped with senses and nervous systems of various 
grades. We regard it as unquestionable that the world of 
physical things cannot reveal itself to all these creatures un- 
der the same aspect. 

But neither the plain man nor the man of science, while 
accepting all this, finds himself forced to conclude that the 
world of physical things is not known at all. Each assumes 
that it is known and that it can furnish him with places and 
dates. Neither feels tempted to locate extinct reptiles in his 
mind, or to date geological epochs by placing them between two 



152 The World We Live hi 

of his ideas. When we ask, where are the creatures that now 
have an experience of the world different from our own ? or, 
when did other creatures have their being ? answers are forth- 
coming which have a significance for science. It is taken for 
granted on all hands that these creatures, if they exist or have 
existed, belong to the same world. It is accepted that, if they 
may be said to perceive at all, they perceive the same world. 

These positions constitute an implicit recognition of the 
World as Phenomenon, and they are heartily approved by the 
New Realist. But, since he who recognizes the world to be 
phenomenon only implicitly, and without a very clear 
consciousness of what he is doing, is in some danger of falling 
into perplexities when he begins to reflect, the New Realist 
thinks it necessary to make the truth explicit and to guard 
against misconception. Thus, he advises men not to overlook 
the fact that, when we say that we all perceive the same physi- 
cal things, we do not mean and we never have meant that we all 
have the same experiences. That we perceive the same things 
he does not doubt for a moment. That most men have no very 
clear notion of what they have a right to mean when they use 
the word "same" in this connection seems to him evident, and 
he tries to enlighten them. 

I hope it has been made plain that the New Realist has ac- 
cepted without reservation the physical world of things recog- 
nized by Everybody. He has rubbed out no outline ; he has 
only thrown a little more light upon what before lay in the 
shade. The material world issues from his hands as stable, as 
dependable, as independent, as it has always been supposed 
to be — a world into which we are born at some definite time, 
in which we endure for a space, and which we do not carry with 
us when we depart out of it, in spite of the fact that it is phe- 
nomenon and is revealed under different aspects to different 
creatures. 

And now for the New Realist and the mind. We have seen 



The New Realism and Everybody s World 153 

that minds are accepted without question in Everybody's 
World, and that they are invariably, if somewhat vaguely, 
referred to bodies. The New Realist accepts them as une- 
quivocally, and also refers them to bodies. 

I remarked in Chapter I that the subject of minds is rather 
a dark spot in Everybody's World. Notwithstanding the 
Cartesian assurance, now on record for centuries, that the 
mind is more easily known than the body, the plain man has 
persisted in feeling very uncertain about the nature of the 
mind, and his utterances remain vague. That he has a mind, 
he never doubts ; that things mental are not things material, 
he doubts as little ; that his mind is related to his body as it is 
not related to other things, appears to him undeniable. He 
speaks of his dreams, of his memories, of his sensations, as be- 
ing in his mind. Exactly what he means by using the expres- 
sions which he does use he leaves undetermined. 

Here the New Realist comes to his aid, and endeavors to make 
clear to him what he sees but dimly. He begins by pointing 
out that, as in the case of external things, so in the case of minds, 
we have to do with phenomena and nothing else. He shows how 
mental phenomena are, in actual practice, distinguished from 
physical. He explains that, when we speak of this or that 
phenomenon as being in the mind, we are referring it to the 
subjective order revealed in experience, and not to the objec- 
tive. He justifies the reference of the mind to the body by in- 
dicating just the experiences in which the connection is 
revealed, and he maintains that the whole meaning of the refer- 
ence is to be found in such experiences. In all this, he affirms, 
and does not deny. He only wishes to fix more clearly dis- 
tinctions already recognized, and to prevent embarrassing mis- 
conceptions. 

Nevertheless, it may be objected, men generally do talk as 
though the mind were in the body, perhaps, in the brain; 
and the expressions they use suggest that they conceive it to 



154 The World We Live hi 

be something different from all mental phenomena, taken singly 
or collectively. If we admit that they speak thus, may we not 
maintain that these two notions mark features in Everybody's 
World, and that the New Realist, in rejecting either or both of 
them, is guilty of perpetrating a robbery upon the public ? 

Over the first of these points I need not linger. I have indi- 
cated x that the modern man does not put the mind unequivo- 
cally into the body. Even a moderate share in the enlighten- 
ment of our day carries him beyond that. But the second 
point it is worth while for us to consider. 

An ancient philosophical tradition made the "substance" 
of such things as tables and chairs something quite distinct 
from all the phenomena in which these objects present them- 
selves. I think we must admit that a more or less faint echo 
of this ancient tradition makes itself perceptible in the thought 
of the average layman to-day. When men say that a table has 
qualities and stands in relations, they do not seem to be clearly 
aware that it is constituted by such phenomena, although they 
never look for anything else in it. Shall we say, when we take 
into account their attitude, that this "substance" is a feature 
of the physical world recognized in common life and in science ? 

It would be absurd to say this. When, in common life, 
men describe the things about them, they leave it completely 
out of their reckoning. Who would think it necessary, in de- 
scribing a bit of wood, a stone, a mass of metal, a geologic age 
or a stellar system, to refer to this philosophic fiction ? Abso- 
lutely everything that we have to say about physical things, 
their changes, their relations, can be said while confining 
oneself to the world of phenomena. To speak, then, of "sub- 
stance," in this sense of the word, as a feature of the physical 
world recognized by Everybody, seems scarcely more sensible 
than to maintain that the Unknowable is a feature of the 
Carboniferous System. The man of science ignores this use- 
less fiction precisely as does the plain man. In his deepest 



The New Realism and Everybody's World 155 

investigations into the constitution of matter, he never once 
refers to it. The world of phenomena is good enough for 
him. 

We have a parallel to this physical " substance" in the mind 
supposed to be something different and distinct from phe- 
nomena and their relations. We say that the mind has sensa- 
tions and ideas, we speak of them as in the mind. Does this 
mean that something which may not properly be said to belong 
to the World as Phenomenon should be regarded as an ac- 
cepted feature of the world in which we all find ourselves? 
Surely not. 

We can scarcely call that a feature which has nowhere been 
sketched into the picture, and which is not to be seen at all by 
one who gazes upon it. The painter who claims to have por- 
trayed St. Jerome in his cave, and who confronts us with a 
canvas upon which is portrayed the mouth of a cavern and 
nothing more, cannot persuade us to purchase by assuring us 
that the saint, though invisible, really is inside and must be 
regarded as a feature of the painting. When we scrutinize the 
utterances of the plain man, when we weigh and analyze his 
accounts of his own mind and of other minds, we find that 
quite all that he really has to say of the mind is said about 
the mind as phenomenon. 

He refers his own mind to a body existing at a particular 
time and place. He can give some account, rather a vague 
account, of the mental phenomena of which he has experience. 
He can, within certain limits, furnish a description of various 
other minds, which he refers to certain bodies. But of the 
modern successor of the ancient "mind as substance" — of an 
"activity" or "awareness," timeless, spaceless, indescribably 
colorless and unmeaning, identical in all persons 2 — of this the 
plain man says nothing and knows nothing. This Jerome 
cannot justly be said to sit at any time at the door of any cave. 
He cannot be identified with any saint, or distinguished from 



156 The World We Live In 

any sinner. He is a metaphysical fiction which we have no 
right to substitute for a dark spot in Everybody's World and 
to describe as a feature. Without loss to anyone, he may 
be dropped out of reckoning. The psychologist finds him as 
useless and insignificant as does his less scientific neighbor. 
He is quite ready to turn him over to the philosopher as being 
recalcitrant stuff of which he can make no use in his science 
— a science which is, nevertheless, supposed to give an account 
of minds. 

Mental phenomena are a feature of Everybody's World. 
So are minds, if we mean minds as revealed in mental phe- 
nomena. Such minds the New Realist accepts ; and he sub- 
scribes without reservation to the treatment actually accorded 
to them in common life and in science. 

There is one more point upon which I may reasonably be 
expected to dwell before leaving the topic of the New Realism 
and Everybody's World. I have said above that we perceive 
the qualities and relations of things directly ; that our experi- 
ence of the physical is as immediate as is that of the mental. In 
saying this I believe that I am only putting into words the 
tacit assumption of common sense and of science. It may be 
admitted that this is the tacit assumption of common sense 
and of science, and yet the protest may be entered that both 
of these make admissions which do not seem, at first sight, at 
least, compatible with this assumption. Is it not admitted by 
Everybody that our knowledge of things has feeble beginnings, 
that it grows, that it may contain error, that it should be held 
subject to possible correction ? How can one maintain that 
things are directly revealed, immediately given in experience, 
and yet that we may be in error about them ? Can the New 
Realist tread this path in the company of the plain man ? 

That there is no real difficulty before us ought to be evident, 
it seems to me, to one who has read carefully the preceding 
chapters. Nevertheless, to make the apparent difficulty as 



The New Realism and Everybody s World 157 

formidable as possible before attempting to meet it, I shall 
adduce certain striking illustrations. 

From a distant point of view I watch the woodman swinging 
his ax; I may maintain that I see a man, clothed in a certain 
fashion, going through certain motions a quarter of a mile 
away. A nearer approach reveals the fact that I was in error 
as to the man's dress and as to the distance. Was, then, the 
man as I saw him external ? or was this an internal represen- 
tative of something external ? 

I see a figure in a mirror. It appears to be behind the mir- 
ror, and to have a definite location at a certain distance and 
direction from my body. Is it actually where it seems to be, or 
is it somewhere else ? 

I hear a tram approaching from the right, and spur my jaded 
steps to intercept it. I discover that the sounds have been 
reflected from the house across the way, and that the tram is 
going in the wrong direction. Did I hear the sounds made 
by the tram approaching from the left? 

A puff of smoke makes itself apparent upon the horizon, 
and some seconds later I hear a booming sound. I do not hesi- 
tate to say that I heard the gun fired. Yet, the sound I heard 
was certainly heard later than anything that I regard as the 
immediate result of the explosion. Can the one phenomenon 
be assigned two different times of being ? 

I look into the starry heavens at night, and the man of 
science informs me that some of the stars which I seem to see 
may have burned themselves out ages ago, and may now be 
emitting no light at all. Can any one see a flaming star that 
does not flame ? What does one really see in such an instance ? 

In the face of such facts as these, what becomes of the 
doctrine that what is external is directly revealed in our expe- 
rience ? that we perceive things as they are and where they are ? 
The first temptation of a man confronted with them is to slip 
into something resembling the ancient Empedoclean doctrine of 



158 The World We Live In 

images or copies discussed in Chapter II. The plain man with 
some scientific information may say : What one really sees is 
the image on the retina of the eye ; what one really hears is the 
disturbance in the ear caused by the air- waves. The philos- 
opher may say : It is an error to believe that in perception we 
have actual experience of a present object; our experiences 
themselves are in a place represented by the brain events with 
which they are correlated. 3 He may even go so far as to say : 
They are the brain events, considered in themselves : the object 
is somewhere else. 4 

I shall be compelled in the next chapter to come back to the 
philosophical doctrine just alluded to. Here I need only say 
that the New Realist must seek some other way out of his ap- 
parent difficulties. He who puts everything immediately ex- 
perienced "inside" is doomed, whether ancient Greek or 
modern European, to lose his external world altogether. 

Nor is the New Realist reduced to this forlorn expedient. In 
the distinction, dwelt upon in Chapters DC and X, between 
internal and external, it was in no way implied that external 
things, to be known at all, must be known exhaustively and ac- 
curately, nor that all that is external is known immediately, 
even when known. It was, indeed, shown that we have as im- 
mediate an experience of physical phenomena as we have of 
mental. But he who will turn to the illustrations there brought 
forward, and will consider their significance, may discover that 
there is nothing in the distinction to suggest that we may be 
absolved from the duty of finding out with pains and effort 
what the qualities and relations of physical things are. 

I sit here at my table and cast my eyes about my room. 
My hand and pen, the table, the chair opposite me, the lounge 
beside it, the wall behind them, stand out as external things 
which I perceive. The ticking of the clock on my table I also 
recognize as external, and I refer it to the clock. Were I 
innocent of all past experiences, did these experiences break in 



The New Realism and Everybody's World 159 

upon me for the first time, they would not be freighted with 
the meaning which they actually carry now. I should not 
know that I can lay my hand on the table, walk over to the 
chair, chase the dog off of the lounge, stop the clock. What 
seems to me now the revelation of the moment is something to 
which I have attained. 

Nevertheless, it is not well to misconceive either that with 
which I started or that to which I have attained. Had I not 
had the fundamental distinction between physical phenomena 
and mental phenomena to build upon, I should never have found 
myself where I am. I now perceive table, chair, and lounge 
opposite my body. My clock ticks in front of me. Where do 
I perceive the chair to be ? How far is it from my body, and 
how far from the table and the lounge ? Where do I hear the 
clock ticking ? These are significant questions. Any answer 
that I am in a position to give must be, to be sure, somewhat 
inaccurate. I may misjudge to some degree the distances of 
the things in question from each other and from my body; 
I may be inaccurate in describing directions. But, on the 
whole, my errors here are relatively small. The objects, their 
qualities, their positions and relations, stand out in my expe- 
rience, and such as they form a basis for judging of what is less 
definitely and directly revealed. 

Let me take an illustration. I stand gazing upon the rising 
moon. The question may be raised : Do I perceive the 
moon where it is and as it is ? It is clear that, in calling this 
that is before me the rising moon, I do not conceive myself 
to be concerned with an isolated phenomenon. This phenome- 
non taken alone is not what any one means by the moon. It is 
a revelation of the moon under given circumstances. By 
having recourse to other experiences of things external, by lis- 
tening to the voice of science, I may learn that, were the relation 
of my body to any part of the moon what it is to this table or 
to that chair, the moon would be revealed under a very differ- 



160 The World We Live In 

ent aspect and one which much better explains the part 
which the moon actually plays in the system of nature. For 
this reason I give it the preference in describing the moon. It 
is a similar reason that induces me to accept the astronomer's 
account of the place of the moon in preference to the indefinite 
suggestions of distance which the experience carries with it 
even to the unlearned.* 

It should be observed that we are concerned with physical 
phenomena from the outset. But it should never be for- 
gotten : (i) that a single experience of the external does not by 
itself constitute what men call a thing; (2) that some such 
experiences give very inadequate information about things; 
and (3) that some are actually misleading to men at a certain 
stage of the development of their experience of the world. 

Shall I, then, say I see the moon as it is and where it is ? 
Yes, if the person to whom I am speaking can be counted on to 
exercise ordinary common sense in interpreting my statement. 
I see the moon to be round, or approximately so, and I see it 
out there in front of my body. One thing is as certain as any- 
thing can be : What I immediately perceive is not on the retina 
of my eye or in my brain. I perceive it to be in front of my 
body, and, if I insist on drawing it into my brain, my body 
must be drawn in with it, which results in incoherence. 

All this is simply taken for granted in ordinary speech. 
Men ask where the moon is. What they want to know is its 
distance and direction from other material things. It never 
occurs to them that the moon as seen from a distance is in one 
place and the moon as seen near at hand must be in another. 
Which means that they are not inquiring about the place to be 
assigned to different percepts of the moon. And when they 
ask what the moon is like, they are not desirous of knowing how 
it would look from all conceivable distances and under all con- 
ceivable circumstances. He who is concerned to know about a 
* See Chapter XII, on the topic of Appearance and Reality. 



The New Realism and Everybody's World 161 

thing and its relation to other things seeks certain definite 
information regarding the phenomena which constitute the 
external order. He must have immediate experience of the 
external somewhere and to some extent, or he would have no 
foundation on which to build. But, given such a foundation, 
he may attain to a very accurate and extensive knowledge of 
things ; and, if he is sensible, he will not, in giving an account 
of things and their qualities, wander off into the domain of the 
psychologist and begin talking about percepts. 

And now let me return briefly to the supposed difficulties 
instanced a few pages back. May the New Realist maintain 
that he perceives immediately the distant woodman and the 
figure in the mirror, that he hears the approaching tram and the 
thundering cannon, that he sees the star which no longer 
shines ? 

He sees the man at a distance, and he attempts a description. 
The experience which he has does belong to the external order ; 
it is an experience of a thing. It should be remarked, how- 
ever, that he is not in the least concerned to describe the expe- 
rience. That he leaves to the psychologist. What he tries to 
describe is the thing. He has observed that some experiences 
give fuller and more accurate information about things than do 
others. In telling us what he sees, he tries to give us such in- 
formation about the thing. His data are inadequate, and he 
makes some errors. It is contrary to common usage and 
contrary to good sense to say that he does not see the distant 
man. He sees him imperfectly, as he should, under the cir- 
cumstances. But he sees him in front of his body, and in the 
same space with his body as he can perceive it. He does 
not see him on the retina of his eye or in his brain. 

Here we have a quite normal ordering of experiences after a 
fashion which we are called upon to exercise at every hour of 
the day. The man at a distance is at once seen to be at a dis- 
tance and in a certain direction — that is, the experience at 



1 62 The World We Live In 

once brings its own interpretation in other experiences. Such 
suggested interpretations are so easily verified and are so con- 
stantly being verified in our experience of things that we have 
little consciousness of the distinction between the experience 
and its interpretation. 

The other cases are slightly different, in that there is what 
may be called an illusion. Where do I see the figure in the 
mirror to be ? Where do I hear the tram ? Do I hear the gun 
when it is fired ? Do I see the extinct sun ? 

The difficulty of giving direct answers to such questions lies 
in the fact that language is not adjusted to what present 
themselves in the experience of men generally as exceptional 
phenomena. No well-informed person is deceived as to the 
facts themselves. In each of the above instances we have to do 
with an immediate experience of phenomena of the objective 
order, with a revelation of some aspect of the external world. 
In each instance the experience carries with it the suggestion 
of an interpretation. My first impulse is to interpret the ex- 
perience according to the common rule, which I follow, and 
have reason to approve, every day. A wider knowledge of the 
external world, a knowledge which is the outcome of many 
experiences, reveals that I must not apply my rule indiscrim- 
inately. I learn to say : I see, in the mirror before me, the 
image of a man standing behind me ; I hear the sound of an 
approaching tram reflected from a wall ; I shall hear that gun 
fired when the sound-waves reach my ear; I see a point of 
light, and I know that there was a flaming star out there, 
whether it is flaming now or not. 

Were men sufficiently well informed, and were such expe- 
riences as those alluded to sufficiently common, there would 
in no case be the shadow of an illusion. Each experience of the 
external world would be given its proper significance auto- 
matically, and there would be no impulse to misconceive 
it. Language would adjust itself to palpable fact, and the ex- 



The New Realism and Everybody s World 163 

pressions used in referring to such experiences would not 
sound paradoxical. 

There is, thus, no reason why the New Realist should not 
maintain, with the plain man and with the man of science, that 
we have immediate experience of external things and of their 
relations. He need make no other reservations than those 
which he finds tacitly accepted in common life and in science. 
It is there tacitly accepted that the physical is immediately 
given in experience, and it is not doubted that our knowledge 
of things has small beginnings, must increase gradually, and 
should be held subject to possible correction. 

The New Realist is, as we see, one who recognizes old truths 
and approves well-tried distinctions. Whether we consider 
physical things or turn our attention to minds, we do not find 
him wandering at random in the void and exercising his free 
creative activity in a manner more creditable to the liveliness 
of his imagination than to the sobriety of his judgment. His 
journeyings have brought him back to Everybody's World — 
to the real things and to the real minds of our common expe- 
rience. He has not returned to deny the world, to destroy the 
world, or to sublimate the world into something quite different 
from what it has heretofore been believed to be. He has come 
back with the conviction that common sense, although it is 
somewhat inarticulate, and often feels truths blindly rather 
than sees them clearly, is, on the whole, surprisingly sensible. 

He has learned, and that is no small thing, that the philos- 
opher is not a magician, and cannot create for us a new heaven 
and a new earth. His business is not transformation. The wise 
thing for him to do is to accept a world of which much was 
known before ever he entered it, and to walk about in it soberly, 
lighting up, as well as he can with his little lantern, what seem 
to be the obscure places in it. 

A sober business, to be sure ; but then, life is a sober busi- 
ness, or should be. If the New Realist is right, we have to do 



164 The World We Live In 

with a world which we already know pretty well, and to which 
we are, perforce, more or less adjusted. Our task seems to be 
to see somewhat more clearly and in better perspective what 
we have already seen imperfectly, and to make our adjust- 
ment a more reasoned one. 

Berkeley offered us a new world in place of the old. It 
turned out to be not a world at all. It was a rosy vision that 
faded even as we gazed. By a new insight, a bit of argument 
as yet unthought of, though it lay on the threshold of many a 
mind before him, he would transform the world. He did not 
transform it ; he lost it, although he never discovered his loss. 

His experience may well suggest to us the necessity of so- 
briety and caution. The consciousness that the world of the 
philosopher is, after all, only the world in which we have 
always lived, should serve as a wholesome check upon extrava- 
gant expectations. Who looks for the Mountain of Gold or the 
Valley of Diamonds in the suburbs of Boston, or on the banks 
of the Hudson ? We have a right to approach with caution 
arguments which seem to compel us to distinctly new and start- 
ling views of a system of things with which we have long had 
some acquaintance. We do well to distrust dazzling revela- 
tions. 

And, if we lose some thrills in keeping our feet upon the soil 
of Everybody's World, we find ourselves not without compen- 
sations. We at least have a world. We are set free from that 
distrust of minds and things as revealed in appearances which 
has cast its shadow over some men of sufficiently acute intel- 
lect. We are relieved of the burden of a hopeless search for a 
Reality wholly different in nature from the homely realities 
with which we are brought face to face every day. 

Naturally, as temperaments differ and not all men have the 
same education, there may be expected differences of opinion 
as to what should or should not be regarded as startling reve- 
lations and approached with a certain distrust. Some accept 



The New Realism and Everybody s World 165 

easily momentous conclusions which strike others as resting 
upon the slenderest of foundations and unsupported by real evi- 
dence. Those who have lived long in the atmosphere of a given 
philosophic tradition may see Everybody's World through its 
mists, and may be quite unaware that the sunsets to which they 
are accustomed are anything to be surprised at. 

I shall, therefore, in indicating what doctrines should be 
approached with caution and even with tentative suspicion, be 
compelled to speak from the point of view of some philosopher. 
I take the New Realist, who is at no small pains to do justice 
to Everybody's World. He objects to its demolition ; he 
does not want it metamorphosed. He has learned that one 
may burn one's fingers at the lamp held aloft by the philoso- 
pher, and that its precious little flame sometimes smokes 
abominably, giving off clouds of words that thicken the air 
and interfere with clear vision. 

Having indicated my standpoint, I may, without further 
ado, maintain that it is our duty to listen in a very critical spirit 
to the prophet who would transfigure the system of things, 
given in our common experience, by asserting that the World 
is Mind-stuff, that it is Will, that it is Idea or Reason or God. 
Especially should we be on our guard against those who, in- 
stead of pointing out to us how we may best adjust ourselves 
to the World, seem inclined to teach us that we may assume the 
World to be Our Creature and may compel it to adjust itself 
to us. 

It should be understood that I have no wish to impugn 
either the genius or the learning of those who bring us such reve- 
lations. The plain man passes them by, and is little affected 
by them. The reflective may be tempted to accept them as 
a foundation, and to build upon them. A presumptive right 
to acceptance such revelations may not claim. Their right 
must be established by a careful weighing of evidence, and 
before a court where logical laws rule supreme. 



1 66 The World We Live In 

In certain chapters to follow I shall discuss — of necessity, 
very briefly — the views indicated above. I think it will 
appear that what is, in each case, offered us, is not a clearer 
view of the world revealed to common knowledge and made the 
object of science. It is a substitute for it. The New Realist 
admits that Everybody's World must have its face washed, 
if its features are to stand out unmistakably. But when he 
discovers that the more he washes a given face, the more it 
becomes apparent that its possessor cannot be the person he 
thought he had in his hands, he grows increasingly suspicious. 
For this, one can scarcely blame him. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WORLD AS MIND-STUFF AND THE WORLD AS WILL 

As I sit here writing, I raise my eyes to view the material 
things that present themselves before me. My table, the chair 
opposite, the lounge beside it, the pictures which hang upon the 
wall above them, stand revealed with some distinctness. Do I 
really perceive them in front of my body and in relation to it 
and to each other ? As we have seen, the answer of common 
sense and of science is unequivocally in the affirmative. 

Do I perceive them as they really are? The question must 
not be brushed aside as a foolish one. We have touched upon 
it a few pages back, but it merits a more detailed discussion, 
for certain answers which have been given to it loom up as ob- 
stacles which threaten to jolt our orderly world from the orbit 
in which it has heretofore rejoiced to run its course, and to 
make of it a wandering star in the chaotic realm of mere 
appearance. 

Admitting that I perceive the physical things, of which I have 
just spoken, precisely as I should perceive them under the 
circumstances, that is, sitting here with my eyes open, and 
with the room lighted as it is — admitting this, may it not 
be questioned whether the circumstances are wholly favorable, 
and whether, if I seriously wish to describe the things referred 
to, I should not appeal from these experiences to something 
else ? Did I walk over to that chair, I might discover defects 
in it which are hidden from me here. Did I bring my face close 
to the picture above it, I might see details which now escape me. 

Men are constantly appealing from things revealed under 
certain circumstances to the same things revealed under certain 
167 



1 68 The World We Live In 

others. This does not mean that they are turning their backs 
upon things as phenomena, and phenomena of the objective 
order. It means that they are giving to certain phenomena 
the preference over certain others, and are accepting them as a 
more adequate revelation of the things. It is in accordance 
with common usage of speech to say that, under given circum- 
stances, things appear so and so, but, perceiving them more sat- 
isfactorily, we find that they really are so and so. 

Thus, we say that the staff which looks bent in the water 
really is as straight as it feels to the hand ; that the edge of the 
plank which we are planing seems straight to the finger, but 
may be seen to be really crooked, when we look along it as the 
carpenter does. In the endeavor to secure full and accurate 
information about things, we may appeal from one sense to 
another, from given experiences of the one sense to other 
experiences of the same, or we may have recourse to reason- 
ings, and may go beyond what can be directly revealed to any 
sense. How far it is wise to go, in a particular instance, is 
matter of convenience or of convention ; how far one can go 
can only be determined by the limitations of human knowl- 
edge. I may appeal from sight to touch, from touch to 
sight, from either of these to smell or taste ; I may appeal 
from a distant view of a thing to a closer view, may reject 
that for the revelations of the microscope, or may betake my- 
self to atoms or corpuscles. 

Such a distinction as this between appearance and reality need 
not throw me into consternation or revolutionize for me the 
material world in a corner of which I find myself. This path- 
way to reality is marked by homely distinctions familiar to all 
and not likely to be misunderstood. If I remark to my serv- 
ant, when he enters the room to stir the fire, that I could see 
the chair or the picture better by shifting my position, he would 
not be surprised at the familiar fact ; he would only marvel 
at my thinking it worth while to point it out. 



The World as Mind-stuff 169 

My friend walks into the room and sits down on the chair 
to begin a chat. Like everything else in the room, his body 
may be revealed to me under various aspects, and I may dis- 
tinguish between appearance and reality here as elsewhere. 
I may ask him to sit close to me, that I may see him better. 
Possibly it may cross my mind that he could be scrutinized 
piecemeal through a microscope. If I have been reading in 
the works of the chemists and the physicists, I may reflect 
that his pleasant smile betrays the presence of swarms of atoms 
or the ceaseless whirl and clash of corpuscles. 

To be sure, if I want to listen to my friend's discourse and to 
enjoy his presence, it is not wise for me to allow my mind 
to dwell too much upon his reality conceived in chemical or 
physical terms. Neither chemist nor physicist could take joy 
in the companionship of his spouse, whatever her charms in 
the eyes of the vulgar, did his mind refuse to dwell upon the 
appearance presented, but hurry on to the contemplation of the 
reality as it is revealed to speculation in the pitiless light of 
science. The man of science very sensibly concludes that the 
appearance, too, is real, and reveals something unmistakably 
present in a real world of which he has experience. He reserves 
his atomic and corpuscular meditations for the laboratory and 
the lecture room. 

Suppose, however, that I take my friend in another spirit, 
and use him as the starting-point for philosophical reflection. 
His body is, then, to me a material thing revealed now under 
this aspect, now under that. It is a thing which has its place 
in a material world, at a measurable distance from my body, 
from the lounge, from the door. Whether I see any of these 
things far or near, view them with the naked eye or subject 
them to microscopic investigation, content myself with them 
as they can be made to appear, or, with the eye of scientific 
faith, contemplate them as atoms or corpuscles, I am concerned 
with what is material and belongs to the same space with my 



170 The World We Live In 

body. Where the appearance is, there is the reality — that is, 
they are both phenomena of the external order, and, within 
certain limits, we may have direct experience of the substitu- 
tion of the one for the other. 

The kernel of the physical nut is physical, and physical sci- 
ence never expects it to be anything else. After the atoms, 
the corpuscles ; after the corpuscles, perhaps the ether ; 
after the ether, what ? certainly not a wave of emotion, or the 
stuff that can be worked up into a dream. The pathway to 
reality breaks off with unnatural sharpness, if it be conceived 
to end in such. A road that for a while leads somewhere, and 
then suddenly takes a turn that is no turn, and leads in no di- 
rection and to no place, may not properly be called a road. 

But my friend has a mind as well as a body. I do not have 
to be a philosopher to know this. In some sense, I refer his 
mind to his body. The crude physical reference of the ancient 
world, I have outgrown. I do not believe that the most ex- 
haustive scientific investigation could reveal my friend's mind 
to be in his body as is a gland or the secretion of a gland. 
Nevertheless, I accept my friend's mind as unhesitatingly as I 
accept his body; I recognize that it belongs to the world I 
know. In this I am at one with common sense and with 
science. I say, and say truly, that his mind is revealed by his 
words and actions. It stands as their interpretation. 

Now, in accepting the physical objects about my body as 
sometimes less and sometimes more satisfactorily revealed in 
perception, and as things regarding the intimate physical con- 
stitution of which science can give me information, I am on the 
plane of the common understanding, and am looking at things 
just as my neighbors do. In recognizing that my friend's mind 
is not directly revealed to any sense, as are this table and 
that chair, I am acknowledging the most commonplace of com- 
monplace truths. All this information I can have and can 
act upon without having read the philosophers at all, and with- 



The World as Mind-stuff 171 

out ever having heard of the external and the internal orders 
of phenomena. But when I begin to make sharp distinctions, 
where I was before content with vague ones ; when I begin to 
ask myself definitely how I am to conceive the relations of minds 
and bodies ; I show plainly that I am not content with Every- 
body's World as it stands revealed to Everybody, and it 
becomes evident that I should like to be a philosopher. 

Suppose that to one in this temper of mind that lucid genius, 
William Kingdon Clifford, who may stand as the prototype 
of the modern panpsychist, offers himself as a guide. He 
makes certain distinctions very clear, and proposes, on the basis 
of these distinctions, a new theory of the world-system. He 
points out that in perceiving the table, the chair, the lounge, 
my friend's body, I am concerned with what may properly 
be called "objects," with something open to direct inspec- 
tion. He emphasizes the fact that my friend's mind can never 
be " object " to me in this sense, that it must ever remain a thing 
inferred, not immediately revealed. He marks the difference 
by calling it an "eject," a something existing, to be sure, 
but excluded from the class of things which may be presented 
in my experience. It is, in no opprobrious sense of the word, 
an "outcast," and belongs to a class of its own. Under no 
circumstances can it take its place among "objects," and no 
scrutiny of "objects " can reveal it in the world of things spread 
out before the senses, the things which I recognize as material. 

So much for "object" and "eject," not merely accepted 
as we all accept them, but reflected upon and sharply dis- 
tinguished. How are we to conceive them as related ? 

Influenced by a seventeenth century philosopher charac- 
terized, I think, rather by the fertility and splendor of his 
speculative imagination than by a taste for cautious and con- 
sistent reasonings, 1 Clifford attributed to all material things, 
if not mind, at least, something like mind, Mind-stuff, a some- 
thing to be treated as the mind of my friend is treated, always 



172 The World We Live In 

an "eject," an outcast from the world of "objects" and be- 
longing to a world of its own. How bring the two worlds 
together? How connect "objects" with "ejects"? Again 
influenced by the same philosopher, Clifford tried a coup-de- 
main: he maintained that it is not necessary to bring the two 
worlds together, for they are together, inasmuch as they are 
the same thing. The "object" is the thing as it appears; the 
"eject" is the thing as it is in itself ; the one is the appearance, 
the other is the reality. 

And both, says Clifford, are the same kind of stuff, mental 
stuff ; so that the whole world is to be conceived as a world of 
mind, or of something like mind. The table, the chair, the 
lounge, the body of my friend, are pictures in my mind. The 
real things outside of them which correspond to them are also 
mental, although they can never be in my mind. 

Clifford has led us back again into the World as Idea ; of 
that there can be no doubt, though most idealists would scarcely 
regard him as a proper guide to one seeking orientation in that 
world. The question that confronts us is : Can this World 
as Idea be accepted as the real world of which, as we are all 
convinced, we have some revelation, and which we desire to 
see more clearly ? 

Never ! Clifford does not throw a light upon Everybody's 
World. He casts over it a spell under which it is rolled up as a 
scroll. I shall not here criticize all his positions. 2 I shall not 
demand evidence that mind, or something like mind, may be 
attributed to all material things. As for his use of the word 
"reality," I shall only remark that there is absolutely no 
justification for it in common usage of speech, and that science, 
when it seriously attempts to find out what material things 
really are, and works in a field in which there is some hope of 
obtaining a definite answer, never dreams of ending a physical 
investigation with the discovery of something mental. It is 
reserved to the philosopher to say that mind is the reality of 



The World as Mind-stuff 173 

matter, and the statement is neither more nor less irresponsible 
than are various other things that some philosophers have 
sometimes seen fit to say. 

Clifford was not merely a panpsychist ; he was also a man, 
and an acute scientific man. In his capacity as such, he said 
many things which have little to do with the revolutionary doc- 
trine set forth above, and some things that are incompatible 
with it. But, as I am concerned here only with the doctrine 
of the World as Mind-stuff, I shall neglect his other utterances, 
and, indeed, shall confine myself to asking : Is the doctrine in 
question, I will not say a reasonable, but even a conceivable, 
doctrine ? When Clifford transforms for us Everybody's World, 
as he does, making the material things in it our perceptions, and 
the reality of those material things other minds, does he present 
us with anything that may properly be called a world at all ? 

"What I perceive as your brain," says Clifford, "is really in 
itself your consciousness, is You ; but then what I call your 
brain, the material fact, is merely my perception." Where is 
that perception ? Clifford puts it, with all other mental facts, 
into the brain ; or, to be more accurate, he regards all such 
facts as parallel to some nervous disturbances in the brain; 
they are the "reality" of such nervous disturbances. 

Thus, this hand with which I write, the table upon which my 
paper is lying, that chair and lounge, the body of my friend, all 
of them material facts and all revealed to sense, must not be 
supposed to be where they seem to be. In the words of the 
acute and scholarly panpsychist quoted in the last chapter, it 
is a fallacy to suppose that perception "involves actual experi- 
ence of a present object." 3 " Our perceptive experiences are 
not in the order which they reveal, or rather not in the part or 
place of that order which they reveal, but in a place represented 
by the brain-events with which they are (as we say) correlated. 
The experiences, in other words, are the brain-events, con- 
sidered in themselves." 4 



174 The World We Live In 

This we must regard, I think, as literally revolution. It is 
the destruction of Everybody's World. I had heretofore sup- 
posed that I perceived my hand to be lying on the table, the 
table to be in front of my body, the chair and the lounge to be 
opposite and at an assignable distance. My mind I referred 
somewhat vaguely to this body, a part of which I immediately 
perceive. My friend's mind I referred to his body, over there 
opposite my body. Directions, distances, magnitudes, seemed 
revealed in experience ; the places and times of things seemed 
determinable and open to inspection. Even my brain, a thing 
I never hoped to perceive immediately, I could locate with 
some defmiteness. I referred it to this body, a part of which 
appears in my experience. I supposed it to be about fourteen 
inches away from this hand of which I am conscious, and in 
an ascertainable direction from it. 

All this, if I listen to the panpsychist, I must repudiate. 
The table, chair, lounge, the body of my friend, and my own 
body, as they present themselves in my experience — this 
whole complex of phenomena which constitutes the world as I 
immediately perceive it, and which must serve as the sole 
foundation of all my judgments as to the distances and direc- 
tions of the other things which I believe in but do not now per- 
ceive — this, the world of my experience, must be drawn into 
my brain, and conceived to be the " reality" of some part of 
my brain. 

"My brain," did I say ? But to what brain can I be refer- 
ring ? Surely not to the brain which belongs to this body which 
I immediately perceive, to the brain which is located in the 
same space with this table and that chair, and is at a measur- 
able distance from them in a given direction. All these things 
have been declared to be "perceptive experiences," seemingly 
without, but really, in themselves considered, "brain-events." 
The brain which I attribute to this body whose hand I now 
perceive to be writing, must be just as much a "brain-event" 



The World as Mind-stuff 175 

as they, and its place must be a " seeming" place, as is theirs. 
If I accept such conclusions, it is unavoidable that I should 
ask myself with anxiety: Where is any real thing? With 
reference to what may its position be located ? 

It is vain to talk of " projecting" my experiences without, 
and thus getting the position of the real thing. I beg the reader 
to remember how I am, by hypothesis, situated. All places, 
distances, directions, with which I am immediately acquainted 
are "seeming" places, distances, directions, and are "within." 
The "real" distances and directions which I seek, and which 
must serve the purposes of my "projections," are not the dis- 
tances and directions revealed in my experience. In the 
latter there is no hint of the former. To "project" something 
known from an unknown place in an unknown direction, to 
another unknown place, is not the proper way to find out where 
anything really is. It is not a question of continuing upon a 
road upon which we find our feet. The road breaks short off, 
and its supposed continuation lies in another world. 

It must have become evident to the reader that this panpsy- 
chist doctrine is nothing else than a new edition of the very old 
doctrine that we can have an immediate knowledge only of 
ideas, and that any realities corresponding to them must be 
known, if known at all, mediately and through the ideas. That, 
in this case, the realities are called mind or mind-stuff is 
a detail. Here, as before, we have on our hands a world of 
things immediately perceived, which is wholly mental, and a 
world of things which cannot be immediately perceived, and 
whose times and places can mean nothing to us. 

From this revolutionary doctrine let us come back for a little 
to the question of mind and brain as it is actually treated in 
science. We must not forget that both common sense and 
science, while accepting as external and physical this hand I 
see, this table, that chair, the body of my friend as revealed to 
observation, do not ignore mental facts. Common sense refers 



176 The World We Live In 

them vaguely to the body. The science which occupies itself 
especially with them refers them to certain hypothetical 
brain-events, which it regards as their correlates. The objec- 
tion which I bring against the mind-stuff theory is not in the 
least that it accepts brains and brain-events and talks of a 
correlation of the mental and the physical. 5 My objection is 
that it takes physical facts, the only physical facts revealed in 
experience, for mental facts, denies that physical things are 
where they are immediately revealed as being, and makes our 
real experienced world, with its definite and ascertainable places 
and times for things and occurrences, a sham and shadow world 
whose things and occurrences cannot be assigned any intelli- 
gible place and time of being. 6 

Science refers my friend's mind to my friend's brain, and my 
mind to my brain. It tells me that the fall of a shutter in the 
instrument on the laboratory table was perceived by me at an 
appreciable interval after the shutter fell, and when certain 
occurrences took place in my brain. But its "where's" and 
its "when's" are not the dubious "where's" and "when's" of 
a "reality" not open to inspection. Where the falling shutter 
is, I can accurately determine. I can measure its distance from 
my body, from the floor, from the walls. When it fell, I 
can, with the aid of modern instruments, determine with 
a high degree of accuracy. This "when" means the time 
of the fall as determined by a reference to other changes in the 
physical things which compose this world to which the shutter 
belongs — the hands of the clock, the revolution of the earth 
on its axis, the journey of the earth about the sun. 

The place and time of the fall of the shutter can, I say, be 
determined with a good deal of nicety. But how about the 
place and time of the brain-events supposed to be concerned 
in my perception of the fall ? Where my brain is I can know 
less definitely than I can know where the shutter is, for I cannot 
get at my brain in the same direct way — it is a shutter in a 



The World as Mind-stuff 177 

closed box, regarding which I make inferences after the anal- 
ogy of other such shutters whose boxes have been opened. 
Just where in my brain those particular brain-events are that I 
should be willing to regard as the correlates of mental events, 
I do not know, nor does any other man. Their nature I can- 
not, with all the aid given me by the most advanced cerebral 
physiology, even venture to guess. The time of these impor- 
tant occurrences cannot be determined with anything like the 
precision with which I can determine the fall of the shutter. I 
am groping and guessing as men do not have to grope and guess 
in much of their work in certain of the physical sciences. And 
in all my groping and guessing, in my attempt to locate the 
brain-events and to fix the time of their occurrence, I have 
absolutely no foundation on which to stand except the places 
and times revealed to me in my immediate experience of the 
things I perceive about my body and in the order of their 
changes. 

Shall I, at the suggestion of the panpsychist, gather up all 
these immediate experiences, which constitute my only foun- 
dation for determining the place or time of anything, and shall 
I relegate them to the unknown place of unknown brain-events, 
occurring at an unknown time ? God forbid ! Even a good- 
natured man must refuse compliance with such a request. 
The little sage of Konigsberg was certainly stumbling along 
the right path when he bumped over the rocks of his "Refu- 
tation" * and pushed forward even when driven to desperate 
leaps from note to note, and from footnote to footnote. If I 
have no immediate experience of the external and physical 
anywhere, but am shut up to presentations or ideas ; if all that 
I can immediately know is "inside," then I not only lose what 
is "outside" altogether, but I lose any "inside" that can 
properly be said to be anywhere at any time. Whether eight- 
eenth-century bishop or twentieth-century physiologist, I face 

* See Chapter VT. 

N 



178 The World We Live In 

the same catastrophe. I become a nobody, with no place in 
history, and no home in an orderly world. My space and time 
have been brought to nought, and as many as might have been 
in them have been scattered. 

The World as Mind-stuff is, thus, no world. Nor can any- 
thing better be said for the World as Will. The difficulty 
is identical, and the criticism must be the same. 

The psychologist of our time lays much more stress, in his 
account of minds, on the phenomena of feeing, impulse, will, 
than did the psychologist of an earlier day. For this, I have 
not the faintest desire to quarrel with him. Whether the 
development of a given mind can best be described from the 
point of view of a realization of impulses, or may better be 
treated in another way, is the affair of the psychologist, who, 
of course, should exercise the same caution in investigation, 
and the same temperateness of speech, that we look for in other 
investigators of nature. 

But we have a right to insist that the word "will" should 
not be taken as a word to juggle with, any more than the 
words "sensation," "perception," "mind" and "mind-stuff." 

Thus, suppose that I begin, as all the world begins, by accept- 
ing a system of things in space and time ; by acknowledging a 
number of minds referred to these things, or to some of them ; 
by discovering among the phenomena which constitute these 
minds something that I call "will" in its higher or in its 
lower manifestations. 7 Suppose that I maintain that the act 
of will consists of certain feelings ; 8 that there are no feelings 
and no volitional impulses that are not bound up with what is 
presented in space and time. 9 Suppose that I insist that by will 
we must really mean will, and that, in contemplating the ap- 
parent evidences of purpose revealed in the organic world, we 
must not attribute the attainment of ends there discerned 
either to powers outside of the creatures under consideration 
or to unconscious impulse, but must have recourse to what in- 



The World as Mind-stuff 179 

trospection reveals as accounting for the attainment of ends in 
our own experience, to actual volition, which is a complex of 
sensations and feelings. 10 

Suppose, I say, that I make of will a something thus revealed 
in experience as connected with the body, and that I dis- 
tinguish between my will and other wills in that I refer this 
will to this body and that will to that. Suppose that, in order 
to make clear to myself what it may mean for one will to act 
upon or to stand in relations to another, I fall back upon the 
illustrations of the family, the tribe, the nation, the race. 11 

May I, after doing all this and securing an orderly world in 
which wills stand in intelligible relations to each other in that 
wills are referred to bodies which have their place in a physical 
system, give the lie to all that I have done before and inconti- 
nently declare that only will is ultimate, that the whole orderly 
world which I perceive is "presentation," a mere product of the 
multiplicity of wills, and in no sense independent ? 12 May 
I abandon the concrete will heretofore accepted as revealed in 
experience and substitute for it a "pure activity of the will," 
freed from all determinate content, beyond the realm of the 
psychologist, indescribable and unmeaning ? 13 May I say 
that physical objects as they are revealed to me are only my 
"presentations," that they are really as completely unknown 
to me as the transcendental will referred to above, but that 
they must in themselves be inferred to be other such wills act- 
ing upon mine ? 14 

Let one try to conceive the family, the tribe, the nation, the 
race, as consisting of a multiplicity of transcendental somethings, 
not in space and time, given in no experience, not standing in 
any describable relations to each other, not falling within the 
realm either of the psychologist or of the student of physical 
nature, acting (sic) upon each other, and begetting (sic) a world 
of appearance, the only world vouchsafed to us, but to which 
they do not themselves belong ! It is little wonder that the 



180 The World We Live In 

eminent man of science who has earned our gratitude by lead- 
ing us through the perplexing mazes of the world of psy- 
chological fact, and by insisting that we must there walk cau- 
tiously in the light of observation and experiment, should, 
in launching us upon this unknown sea, where no coast can be 
said to be at any distance or in any direction, where the com- 
pass is useless, and where the altitude of no star can be taken, 
feel it his duty to tell us that we are not in the region of evi- 
dence, and that we must abstain from the attempt to prove a 
reality corresponding to our ideas. 15 

From such transcendental heights it is wholesome to descend 
to the lower levels of common sense and of science. He who 
loses the world, the real experienced world of physical things 
and minds, loses with it his own soul. Certainly he has no right 
to call his soul his own — to recognize it as this particular mind 
connected with this particular body, to distinguish it from the 
mind of any one else. "Transcendental apperception" is not 
a soul that can either be saved or damned ; 16 nothing that 
means anything can happen to it anywhere at any time ; joy 
and grief, good and evil, pass over its head, or would, if it had a 
head, but being only an "idea of the reason" to which no real- 
ity can be proved to correspond, 17 it can only by a stretch of 
courtesy be allowed a place even in a metaphor. A derelict, 
drifting aimlessly, lo ! these many years, on the hospitable 
currents of the history of philosophy, formless and useless, 
something of a menace to navigation, it is of interest only as a 
warning. We see what the incautious mariner may make of the 
noble ship that once sailed from port with crew and cargo, all 
its sails spread for the haven where it would be, and busied with 
the wholesome commerce that occupies the world of living men. 18 

All of which signifies that he who really withdraws his foot 
from the soil of Everybody's World, and trusts himself to aerial 
navigation in the company of the ghosts of dead philosophers, 
must not be surprised at passing through the tails of nonexist- 



The World as Mind-stuff 181 

ent comets and arriving at worlds which are nowhere. The risks 
he takes are the penalty of his daring ; and the reward he reaps 
is the passage from the world of humdrum fact into the region 
of romance, where one is not under the tiresome necessity of 
being consistent, and where questions of proof and disproof 
no longer spread one's bed with thorns. 

So much for the World as Mind-stuff and the World as Will 
considered from the point of view of theory. But men are not 
interested only in theory. They find themselves in a world, 
and they seek to adjust themselves to it. It is to them of no 
small moment under what aspect the world seems to reveal 
itself. One may be inclined to regard it as a dreary desert; 
another may accept it as a cozy home. If we tell men that the 
whole world consists of mind or mind-stuff, or if we say that the 
only ultimate reality is a community of wills, do we not seem to 
transfigure the world ? do we not make dry bones live, in a way 
stimulating to the emotions and satisfying to the heart? 
Difficulties connected with the "when," the "where," the 
"what," of things, many who hear such comforting words will 
be inclined to brush aside. Why scrutinize the premises and 
their connection, if the conclusion be so palatable ! Perhaps 
it embodies truth; and is not a welcome "perhaps" better 
than an unwelcome " therefore " ? 

To those whose emotional leanings may urge them forward 
in this direction, I recommend an unbiased examination of the 
conclusion itself. Does it really carry with it even a shadow 
of the inspiration which breathes in Berkeley's doctrine? 
Does it make of the world more of a home for the human soul, 
or instill into man any hopes which he did not have before ? 

Clifford, were he here now, would attribute a mind to my 
friend, and might even love him. To the table and to the 
chair he would attribute mind-stuff, a something far different ; 
nor would he expect me to feel a whit the less lonely on the 
departure of my friend, if I consented to accept his panpsychic 



1 82 The World We Live hi 

doctrine, and to hold that, after that departure, the mind-stuff 
of the furniture still remained. Neither of the clear thinkers 
referred to earlier in this paper can be accused of supposing 
that his doctrine is in the remotest degree analogous to theism 
in any of the historical forms which it has taken. A powdered 
and distributed god, made up for the most part of disconnected 
"infra-experiences," and conscious and intelligent only in a few 
limited spots, is not what men have called God. If we accept 
such, we do not flood with golden light a world otherwise to 
be described as gray and cheerless. We may not talk of a "far 
off, divine event." We only rub out altogether what science 
even now treats as a wavering and indefinite line ; and we 
attribute something very faintly resembling a rudimentary 
sentience even to the elements which rage in the flaming sun 
and to the cosmic dust that drifts cold in the interplanetary 
spaces. We extend downwards the borders of life — a life 
which we already recognize as present in the water doled out 
to the prisoner in his cell, and present in abundance in the 
ooze left by the retreating tide. We look down, not up. 

And if the great German scholar last criticized stirs our emo- 
tions by speaking of a World-will, 19 let us bear in mind that this 
is but a name for the community of transcendental wills dis- 
cussed, above — wills which have no place in any world we know 
and are not wills at all as such are revealed in our experience. 

What shall we name the World as Mind-stuff and the World 
as Will ? Neither has body enough to pass as a realism, for, 
in each case, the things revealed in space and time have been 
drawn within the mind; they have become apparitions. Yet, 
neither is precisely an idealism, for it seems to lack the soul. 
I recognize their ambiguous nature in assigning to them a place 
of their own between the two doctrines just mentioned. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A WORLD OF THE NEW IDEALISM 

And now for idealism — not the idealism of Berkeley, which 
I have already discussed, but the idealism of our own day. 
We have seen that all realists are not alike. To those who 
discriminate, it is quite as evident that all idealists are not alike. 
There are the prudent, the cautious, the guarded, those whom 
Kant would not, I think, have regarded as "genuine" or 
"proper" idealists; and there are the bold and truculent, the 
speculative and soaring, whom Kant would have recognized as 
unequivocally "extravagant." 

It is my aim here to contrast idealism with realism. I must 
not, then, choose types of the former which have so lost the 
historic features of their order that their representatives, in 
meeting a modern realist, are in doubt whether to call him 
friend or foe. I must cast about me for one or two "terrible 
examples." In bringing them forward as such there can be 
nothing invidious ; it can only mean that the writers referred 
to have the honor of being prominent representatives of the 
class to which they have elected to belong. 

Manifestly, it would be an injustice to confound with such 
writers those who renounce them and all their works, and have 
in common with them little save a generic name. In so far as 
the New Realist and the New Idealist are separated only by a 
word,* they may rejoice together in the sweet odor of their 
common doctrine, and may walk hand in hand on the solid 
ground of Everybody's World. To such idealists any criti- 
cisms contained in this chapter and in the next do not apply, 
* See Chapter IV, at the end. 
183 



184 The World We Live In 

and they are under no obligation to appropriate them. But 
there undoubtedly are types of idealism which differ widely 
from any form of realism touched upon in this book. They 
do not accept Everybody's World; they "transmute" it. 
It is well to get a good look at these, and to see what they have 
to offer in exchange for the world which they take from us. 

Let us suppose an American, wearied with the intellectual 
and spiritual unrest to which his own enterprising land is no 
stranger, to seek a quiet retreat at Oxford. He finds himself, 
to all appearance, in green pastures and beside still waters. 
The New Idealism receives him into its grateful shade. The 
Mentor who extends to him a friendly hand promises him a 
speedy relief from two old burdens that have long galled his 
shoulders. He is at once informed that our orthodox theology 
on the one side and our commonplace materialism on the other 
will vanish like ghosts before the daylight of free skeptical 
inquiry; the mutilation of his nature, which has arisen from 
taking these seriously, will be healed ; he will be rescued from 
stupid fanaticism and from dishonest sophistry. 1 

Nor is his gain to be merely negative. He will be led beyond 
the region of ordinary facts, brought into communion with 
what is beyond the visible world, may hope to find something 
higher, which will both support and humble, both chasten 
and transport him. He is encouraged to believe that he will 
find in metaphysics a principal way of experiencing the Deity. 2 

Alluring vistas are, thus, opened up, and high hopes are 
inspired. There seems already faintly revealed a world less 
opaque and disappointing than the one which our neophyte 
has been compelled to traverse. His world has been full of 
ordinary facts; it is the commonplace visible world which 
men generally inhabit — a world of seemingly undeniable 
material things and of minds more or less like his own. It has 
proved itself a world not wholly without light and color, but 
one stretching away into a darkness where all colors and 



A World of the New Idealism 185 

contours are lost. Into that darkness even the imagination of 
man ventures timidly and with hesitating steps. And it has 
been a world of strife ; our traditional theology, our common- 
place materialism, and many combatants not precisely resem- 
bling the one or the other, have filled it with the shout of battle 
and the clangor of arms. But such as he has found it, it 
has been a world impossible to ignore. There it has been, there 
it is, there it will remain. No vision which visits him can 
make him wholly forget that he feels it beneath his feet. 

The method adopted to still the strident voice of that soul- 
less phantom, our commonplace materialism, seems to be an 
attack upon this world. 3 It is pointed out as at once evident 
that, "there is no being or fact outside of what is commonly 
called psychical existence. Feeling, thought, and volition 
(any groups under which we class psychical phenomena) are 
all the material of existence, and there is no other material, 
actual or even possible." 4 

Now, one thing has seemed certain even to one stunned by 
the noise of the fray, and bewildered by the cries of the com- 
batants. The world of material things, the field on which the 
battle is fought, must be accepted, whatever else be doubted. 
But, on the basis of this doctrine that everything is psychic, 
what becomes of the material world — what becomes, for 
example, of such a thing as a mountain ? Does the mountain 
exist only for the individual, and while he perceives it ? Shall 
it be allowed no sort of independence ? 

To this protest of the flesh an answer is forthcoming which 
seems, on the surface, reassuring : "The physical world exists, 
of course, independent of me, and does not depend on the 
accident of my sensations. A mountain is, whether I happen 
to perceive it or not." 5 

But what follows is again disquieting. Our inquirer is 
informed that, when he is not perceiving the mountain in 
question, it may, for all he knows to the contrary, be perceived 



1 86 The World We Live In 

by some other finite creature; or, if not perceived at all, it 
may, at least, be thought about. Has not that which is 
thought about some kind of existence ? Hence, the mountain 
exists, in some fashion, for some mind or something like a mind. 6 
Is not that enough ? 

Some such account of the mountain was given long ago by 
Bishop Berkeley, though he, to be sure, gave it a place in the 
Divine Mind during the intervals of its perception by finite 
minds. In this New Idealism the doctrine is modified. All 
being or fact is made psychical, but it is maintained that we 
are not to look for anything psychical, above all not for any- 
thing of this sort, save in the minds of finite creatures of 
various orders. 7 These, however, collaborating with one 
another, and between their perceiving and their thinking, 
may very well save the mountain from an intermittent and 
staccato existence, guaranteeing it an independence of each, 
if not of all. 

Physical nature is, thus, saved, so far ; but is assigned a 
properly subordinate place. And this is a matter of vast 
significance. We may not say that, in the history of the 
Universe, matter came before mind, the inorganic before the 
organic ; this is manifestly absurd. 8 In so far as there is a 
world at all, it is a world of sentience, and the materialist is 
brought to his knees. 

There was much that promised comfort in Berkeley. He, 
too, confounded the materialist, after his own fashion; and, 
expelling from existence the world of "inert, senseless matter," 
he revealed to us a gorgeous World of Ideas. Nature was 
transfigured and yet remained Nature. It was penetrated 
with a new radiance, was charged with the perfume of a new 
significance — it acquired the dignity of a Divine Language, 
unveiling, in its beauty, order, and harmony, the thoughts and 
purposes of God. Berkeley's ideas of sense, known to the 
vulgar as material things, did not strike him as unreal or in 



A World of the New Idealism 187 

any wise absurd. He would have been the last to accuse 
the Divine Revelation of incoherence, although he would 
have been among the first to admit the limitations of human 
knowledge and to claim but an imperfect comprehension of 
the Heavenly Message. Our neophyte takes heart of grace 
at finding himself not wholly cut off from the respectable 
company of Berkeley; and, in spite of inward qualms, he 
accepts without open revolt the patchwork psychical existence 
of the dubious mountain. It is at least a weapon of offense 
against the materialist. 

But a further initiation into this new Idealism fills him with 
dismay. Berkeley vanishes like a ghost in the light of the new 
revelation. Our truth-seeker is brought to see that minds and 
their ideas are alike false and unreal appearances, "infected" 
with incurable disease, dying daily by virtue of their own self- 
contradictory natures. There can be no talk of beauty, order, 
and harmony. The Divine Language has become mere 
incoherence, and no word or sentence in it has any sense or 
meaning. 

Thus, things must have qualities and must stand in relations, 
or they are nothing ; but things, qualities, and relations are 
all equally absurd. 9 Nothing can be extended in space, 
nor yet have continuance in time. Its own inconsistency is 
the condemnation of space, and time is helplessly dissolved. 10 
Motion, change, and the perception of them naturally become, 
under the circumstances, impossible ; and causality is a con- 
ception to be held in derision. 11 Power, force, energy, and 
activity cannot bear scrutiny. 12 Hence, "things," when 
critically examined, are seen to be "undermined and ruined." 13 

"Things" having crumbled into relations that can find no 
terms, and having gone to pieces, it remains to see whether 
there can be saved from the wreck of Berkeley's world of 
spirits and ideas, at least, the spirits. But here the situation 
is no less desperate. The Self turns out to be too full of con- 



1 88 The World We Live In 

tradictions to be "genuine fact"; 14 and the existence of a 
plurality of finite souls distinct from each other must not 
be supposed to be ultimate truth. There is no real plurality ; 
what seems to be such lies in the realm of mere appearance 
and error. 15 Thus, everything, the admittedly psychical as 
well as what is vulgarly called physical, turns out to be incon- 
sistent with itself and visibly totters to its fall. 

In this general wreck and ruin the fate of the mountain is 
sealed. To be a mountain at all, it must have qualities, and 
must stand in relations to valleys and plains ; this it cannot do. 
It must be high or low, and yet it cannot be either, for all 
extension in space is sheer absurdity. It is forced to have a 
past, and yet its past will not bear looking into, and had better 
not be uncovered. It never has undergone, and it never will 
undergo, anything so ridiculous as change. To talk of it as 
caused or as uncaused is equally out of the question. Its 
fantastic apparent being cannot really be bolstered up by 
the involuntary cooperation of a plurality of finite minds, for 
no one of these can really exist itself ; and, anyhow, the notion 
that minds can exist simultaneously or successively is to be 
scouted. 

The truth — or, rather, the nearest approach to the truth 
attainable by us 16 — is that the mountain and the world to 
which it seems to belong constitute a show so fleeting that 
it cannot even consistently fleet. Common sense and science, 
falsely so called, are apt to speak of hill and dale and all the 
rest as though their existence meant something more than 
this ; but any serious theory must in some points collide with 
common sense, and the object of the sciences is not at all the 
ascertainment of ultimate truth. 17 

So passes the World of the Old Idealism. The "beauty, 
order, extent, and variety of natural things" have been under- 
mined; the "magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the 
larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of 



A World of the New Idealism 189 

the creation, together with the exact harmony and corre- 
spondence of the whole," have disappeared as a vapor. 18 Our 
novice can no longer take pleasure in green pastures and still 
waters. He suspects the greenness of the one, and he sees 
that the stillness of the other must be infected by temporal 
succession. To the metaphysician he has been accustomed to 
allow a certain latitude of thought and speech; but a pro- 
found discontent, born of a long familiarity with Everybody's 
World, where appearances, although they appear, do not all 
seem to bear a bad character, finally precipitates revolt. 

"We, too," he remarks, after reflection, "have in New York, 
our museum of curiosities. A spiral mathematical point, a 
pentagonal straight line, an oval square circle, a sour blue 
sound, an ear-splitting silent smile, the present perception of 
to-morrow's sun, nobody's thoughts of real nothings — these 
and many more as strange stand on exhibition in the cases." 

"Stop!" interposes an interested and better initiated by- 
stander. "Such things as these cannot be there, for they 
cannot exist even as appearance. This is pure illusion." 

"They may not exist in Oxford," retorts the American, "but 
transfer yourself to my country, to 

" ' Happy climes where, from the genial sun 
And virgin earth such scenes ensue.' 

There one may expect palpable absurdities; 'not such as 
Europe breeds in her decay ' ; not appearances which appear 
self- contradictory and absurd only after they have passed 
through the hands of some philosopher, and are open to the 
suspicion that they have been tampered with and are not 
genuine curios; but such as need no medium, no cabinet, no 
half-lights, and which at once proclaim their absurdity to 
all comers. Ours annihilate themselves openly and in the 
light of day. The spectacle may be enjoyed without pre- 
vious preparation, and at a merely nominal expense ; it is 
within the reach of everybody's purse." 



190 The World We Live In 

"You have fallen into a confusion," is the rejoinder. "You 
do not discriminate properly between absurdities and absurd- 
ities. Those which are too palpably absurd cannot even 
appear, and may simply be left out of account. 19 Those, on 
the other hand, that do not appear absurd to men generally, 
that are not regarded with suspicion by science, that deceive 
by their outward show of respectability even a large number of 
philosophers by profession — such can secretly and unob- 
trusively annihilate themselves by inherent self-contradiction, 
and may yet appear ; they must be accepted as fact ; 20 they 
exist, 21 although they are not and cannot be real. Indeed, of 
such unreal and self-contradictory facts is constructed the 
whole frame of Everybody's World, the world in which you 
have, so far, blindly walked. All these facts are, to be sure, a 
prey to self-annihilation, but this self-annihilation does not 
imply extrusion from the realm of fact and existence; it 
implies only that what appears is not what appears, but is 
really something else. 22 

"Let us confine ourselves to appearances whose inconsistency 
can be detected only by the eye of the metaphysician. They 
are all infected, it is true, but it is worthy of remark that there 
is some choice even within this realm of self-contradictions. 
Thus, although extension and duration are impossible, and 
hence, what fills space and exists in time must be absurd and 
unreal, still, that which fills a great space and lasts a long time 
is relatively more real than the diminutive and the short- 
lived. 23 There are also other marks which indicate that some 
self-contradictory appearances are to be preferred before 
others. 24 Nevertheless, Appearance is Appearance, and is, 
at best, unsatisfactory and unreal. It is time to leave this 
lower realm, and to turn to something that can satisfy, at 
least, the main tendencies of our nature. 25 Have patience. 
So far, the ground has been cleared. But the best is yet to 



A World of the New Idealism 191 

That best turns out to be the substitution for Everybody's 
World, now discredited, undermined and ruined, of the 
Reality, the Universe, the Whole, the Absolute. This rises 
upon the scene of the wreck, and is constructed of the old 
materials. But in the new edifice they undergo a change 
and become transfigured. 

The foundation is laid in the fact that appearances, self- 
contradictory as they are, are not non-existent. They must, 
as existent, fall somewhere; and where should they fall, if 
not in Reality ? To suppose them existing somehow and some- 
where in the unreal is quite meaningless. 26 Appearance must 
live in and belong to Reality, and Reality apart from all 
appearance would be nothing. 27 

And now for the nature of Reality. Is it not at once evi- 
dent that Reality cannot contradict itself ? How can the self- 
contradictory be real ? But to be self-consistent Reality 
must reject inconsistency, and that which rejects inconsistency 
works. Observing it at its work, we attain to a positive 
knowledge of the nature of Reality. 28 

So far, however, we have but an empty outline. We must 
fill it in. With what? With the only kind of stuff that 
exists at all — with psychical stuff, sentient experience. 29 
And this stuff must be found in finite minds or "centers of 
experience." We may assume that there is enough matter 
here to furnish all its content to Reality. 30 

The stuff "as such" is, to be sure, very poor. It is infected 
throughout. But it is not "as such" that it is employed in 
the new construction. In the fires of free skeptical inquiry 
its dross is purged away. Stone is no longer stone, mortar 
is no longer mortar, wood is no longer wood. In entering 
into the whole, each has sacrificed every characteristic which 
distinguished it from anything else ; there is "an all-pervasive 
transfusion with a reblending of all material " ; things, as such, 
are " transmuted and have lost their individual natures." 31 



192 The World We Live In 

The transformation is most thoroughgoing. The psychical 
stuff which is to furnish its content to Reality must be tran- 
scended and merged. 32 The distinction between psychical and 
physical, as well as the barriers which separate one soul from 
another, must be done away. 33 Space must lose its impossible 
extension, and time its inconceivable succession. In the 
interests of harmony and consistency all qualities and relations, 
as such, must be suppressed. 34 Indeed, all differences must 
come together, and all distinctions be fused. 35 It is to the 
attainment of this consummation that Reality works. 

And having tunelessly done its perfect work, it looms 
vaguely 36 before us as the Universe, the Whole, the Absolute. 
To speak of it in fitting language is not easy. It is One, but 
not one in the usual sense of the word, which contrasts the one 
with the many. 37 It is a "compensating system of conspiring 
particulars," 38 which are not, strictly speaking, particulars, 
which stand in no relations, and which are distinguished by 
no differences. It is the Whole, beyond which there is nothing, 39 
and yet it seems that nothing is in it "as such." 40 Falling 
within it, appearances, as such, cease ; 41 yet this annihilation 
itself seems to be empty appearance, for nothing can be lost, 
and the private character of everything still remains 42 to en- 
rich 43 somehow with detail the diversity of the incomprehensible 
unity and to prevent its being a flat monotony. 44 Although a 
Whole, it has no parts, and in every unreal finite center arising 
from its inexplicable division, it is present as a whole. 45 With 
this Reality we have direct contact ; we feel it burningly in 
the one focus of our own personal experience and sensation. 46 

How materials so hopelessly infected with a self-contra- 
dictory "as such" can be supplemented, transformed, tran- 
scended, transmuted, overridden, absorbed, and suppressed 
into an Absolute which, apart from appearances, is nothing, 47 
and which must "inhabit" appearances, 48 while keeping itself 
clear of all that makes them what they are ; how appearances 



A World of the New Idealism 193 

are made to cease, and, nevertheless, allowed to remain — to 
know all this, in detail, is beyond us; it is accomplished 
"somehow," "we know not how." 49 Our knowledge extends 
but a little way; but we should, at least, avoid degrading 
Reality to the rank of mere Appearance. 

Thus, we must understand that it is not, properly speaking, 
an experience, and is not a person. 50 It is not good, for good- 
ness is self-contradictory. 51 It is neither moral, nor beautiful, 
nor true. 52 Happy it is not, for its pleasantness is blended 
beyond recognition. 53 Nor must it be regarded as Divine. 
Here it is necessary to supplement the inadequate statement 
made at the outset, namely, that in the study of metaphysics 
we have a principal way of experiencing the Deity. Religion 
naturally implies a relation between man and God, and this 
is self-contradictory. 54 Metaphysics has no special connection 
with genuine religion. 55 The God of religion, critically con- 
sidered, turns out to be either inconsistent emptiness or dis- 
tracted finitude. 56 

But, should all this appear discouraging, there is comfort 
to be taken in the thought that the Universe is not "behind" 
appearances, and making a sport of us. 57 It is "above" and 
"beyond" them. 58 Such matters are not precisely intelligible, 
but that is not to be expected. No aspect of things is intel- 
ligible. When they have become intelligible, they have ceased 
as such to be. 59 Nevertheless, in the vague and abstractly 
grasped notion that the Universe is not behind things, making a 
sport of us, but is above and beyond them, feeding us with 
appearances, is there not something that supports and hum- 
bles, chastens and transports one ? 

"Transported, I find myself," retorts the infected citizen 
of Everybody's World, "but chastened, never! I have 
clearly been robbed of my all. Our commonplace materialism 
offered me something like a world, at least ; and our traditional 
theology seemed to offer me something more. Since there is, 



194 The World We Live In 

as it would appear, such potency in a 'somehow,' why may I 
not have recourse to it to piece out the deficiencies of the one 
or the other of these, and thus be not wholly bereft ? In the 
new doctrine, the world has gone to pieces; and, as for the 
Absolute, / believe it to be no better than a word. 

" Appearances, as such, I am told have no reality; the 
Reality, as such, cannot appear, for then it would be self- 
contradictory. They must be brought together by violence — 
the appearances must be made to lose their individual natures. 
The operation is inconceivable. I appeal to Mr. Bradley : 
'A God which has to make things what otherwise, and by 
their own nature, they are not, may summarily be dismissed 
as an exploded absurdity ' — a deus ex machina. We are not 
called upon to consider this well-worn contrivance. 60 Is it 
otherwise with the Absolute ? Hence, everything of which 
we seem to have experience must, after all, fall, if it falls at all, 
somehow and somewhere in the region of the unreal. So 
passes the Absolute, with the unreal world which it is sup- 
posed to 'inhabit.' " 

With this revolt of the natural man, plain men who have a 
weakness for feeling some sort of ground beneath their feet 
cannot be out of sympathy. Nor, for that matter, can the 
philosopher, so long as the philosopher retains some respect 
for common sense and for science, and views with suspicion 
the demolition of Everybody's World. For this is no less than 
a demolition. The world has not been illuminated and 
transfigured ; it has been destroyed ; and nothing — absolutely 
nothing, — save a word, has been put in its place. 

Is it surprising that the issue should be discontent? The 
wound in the patient's intellectual nature has been torn in 
the probing until even the plaster of a "somehow" seems 
hopelessly inadequate to cover the whole of it. The mutila- 
tion which distressed him has not been healed but has ended 
in a more distressing deformity. He was a seeker after God, 



A World of the New Idealism 195 

and he has found in metaphysics a principal way of experi- 
encing either inconsistent emptiness or distracted finitude, 
while vaguely conceiving something still higher to which he 
can attach many names but no meaning. Why should he be 
content? What right has he, the walking self-contradiction, 
the unreal appearance, the infected apparition, to demand 
satisfaction! Nevertheless, he had hopes, and they have not 
been fulfilled ; he was promised something, and he has received 
nothing at all. The result is disillusion. 

To the philosopher, who watches with a critical eye the 
operations which this New Idealism performs upon Every- 
body's World, there presents itself with much insistence the 
question, How is it possible that any one could be persuaded 
to look for consolation and satisfaction as a result of this 
process of destruction and verbal substitution ? The answer 
which seems unavoidable is that the true nature and outcome 
of the process is concealed from view by a veil of words 
and images. Berkeley talked sometimes of a Divine Lan- 
guage ; but he himself used plain English, and took pains to 
be understood. In this New Idealism, however, there is 
employed throughout a language which differs so widely from 
ordinary human speech that it can scarcely fail to create 
misconception and illusion. 

Thus, when men contrast "appearance" and "reality," as 
they constantly do, and give the preference to the latter,* they 
never mean by reality anything in the faintest degree re- 
sembling what is called " Reality " above. The " wholes " 
of which men speak have parts, and are composed of their 
parts. The " systems " which they construct, or wish to 
construct, are never free from internal distinctions and re- 
lations. The most complete "harmony" is not thought to 
entail the ruin and disappearance of the things harmonized. 
No one dreams of calling " rich," and full of " treasures," 
*See Chapter XII. 



196 The World We Live In 

what has carefully been emptied of all variety of content. 
The self-contradictory and impossible are not labeled " fact," 
and it occurs to no one to assign them "existence." The 
"Universe" in which men are interested, and about which 
they speculate, is the universe to which the choir of heaven 
and furniture of the earth, as such, belong. Any other uni- 
verse they regard as an idle dream; and any universe which 
could be wholly but indescribably in each of its own unreal 
parts, they would reject as a nightmare. 

It is, hence, by a systematic misuse of words which have 
an accepted meaning that this New Idealism creates the illu- 
sion that it is busying itself about something of interest to 
mankind. Men care vastly to increase their knowledge of 
the system of things; to find out more about the universe of 
which science offers us an inadequate revelation; to avoid 
error ; and to attain, as well as they may, to a knowledge of 
realities. And many men find absorbing the problem whether 
the great system, of which they find hemselves an insignifi- 
cant part, is in any sense a revelation of a Divine Mind. 
But their interest is not in mere words, and in words wrested 
from their natural meaning. The associations which persist 
in clinging to such may deceive some for awhile, and may 
succeed in stirring emotion. Disillusion, however, seems 
inevitable, in the case of those who do not merely feel, but 
think, and try to think clearly. 

Perhaps it will be said that clear thought and accurate 
speech are out of place in dealing with what lies on the 
confines of human knowledge, or beyond them; that words fail 
to describe what only an abuse of speech, relieved by metaphor, 
can faintly adumbrate. Thus, a multitude of questions, and 
very disagreeable ones, can, it seems, be raised by the common- 
place carping mind when anything is said about the Absolute 
at all. But why not abandon frankly all attempt at accurate 
speech, admit one's inconsistency freely, and approach the 



A World of the New Idealism 197 

subject with the generous looseness of metaphor ? Why not 
say, for example: "The Absolute has no seasons, but all at 
once bears its leaves, fruit, and blossoms. Like our globe, it 
always and it never has summer and winter " ? 61 May we not 
accept this as poetry, even if it condemns itself as science? 

To this, I am compelled to give the answer, that, in the first 
place, the New Idealism does not present itself merely as 
poetry, and in the second, even poetry is not without its 
hampering restrictions. "That is the bitterness of arts," 
complained Somerset, when the sonorous word "orotunda" 
was rejected by his poetry ; "you see a good effect and some 
nonsense about sense continually intervenes." 

Before closing this chapter, I wish to repeat that the doctrine 
it discusses is a New Idealism, and there are others which 
differ from it widely. And I feel like recording the conviction 
that any support and comfort which has been found in it has 
never come from the doctrine "as such." It flows rather from 
a source of inspiration from which the accomplished author, 
many other philosophers, and many theologians, orthodox or 
the reverse, have all stooped to drink. Some have been 
realists, some idealists, and there are those that have given an 
uncertain sound ; but they have drunk at the same spring, 
and they have risen to go away refreshed. They speak 
various tongues, and there is dispute among them ; but one 
sees that they walk together, even though they are not agreed. 

Sometimes a man means more than he says ; sometimes he 
says more than he means ; sometimes he does both. To insist 
that he means what he does not say, appears to be an imper- 
tinence ; to hold him strictly to what he says may seem, at 
times, ungenerous. But when we are discussing a system of 
doctrine, and not a man — who may, indeed, be much more 
than his system — it seems prudent to keep in view what has 
actually been written, rather than what we think might very 
well have been written. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ANOTHER WORLD OF THE NEW IDEALISM 

Is not a tendency to hasty generalization admittedly the 
weakness of the American visiting Europe? Our seeker for 
truth does not wait to find out whether Oxford has something 
better to offer him. He incontinently takes his departure 
from the scene of his disillusionment. "No, no," he remarks: 

" God's in his Heaven, 
For all's wrong with the World — 

that is not even good poetry ; and its deficiencies become 
glaringly apparent when one realizes that God is unknowable 
in his own nature, and the heaven he ' inhabits ' is a purgatory 
to which no shade can be admitted without first proving itself 
to be a logical monstrosity." 

He returns to America ; and, Oxford suggesting Cambridge, 
he betakes himself to the famous university near Boston. 
More seems to be offered him there than he can expect to obtain 
elsewhere. 

Being a reader, he is aware how Berkeley burned his fingers 
in playing with the word "Idea," and his late experiences at 
Oxford have rendered him more mistrustful than ever of the 
attractive title "Idealism." Nevertheless, his everyday world 
does not seem to him wholly ideal, nor does it give at once 
unequivocally satisfactory answers to all the questions he 
would like to address to it. If he can get a better world in place 
of it, why not risk the attempt ? 

For, indeed, great things are promised. Not all the leeks 
and onions of the Egypt in which he has been condemned to 
pass his days so far can weigh for a moment as against the 
1 98 



Another World of the New Idealism 199 

milk and honey of the Promised Land, the road to which is 
mapped before him. He must fly, it is true; he must raise 
himself on the wings of dialectic to heights as yet unknown to 
him. But he will not be without guidance — has he not both 
a riving teacher and a volume of instructions comprising more 
than a thousand pages ? * 

Great things, I say, are promised. He is to arrive at a 
demonstrative knowledge that God exists as a Perfect Being 
whose Will is eternally accomplished. He is to be shown that 
the World is not dead and mechanical, but is everywhere 
instinct with life, nay, that it is a. Life in which his little life 
may feel at home. Moreover, he will see that he is not, and 
cannot be, a link in a causal series, but is Free. He will rejoice 
in the discovery that his griefs and sorrows, his shortcomings 
and his sins will be transcended and made good, and his own 
real will, which is identical with God's will, must be completely 
satisfied. That last of terrors, Death, will spread his sable 
wings and disappear, for it will be proved that Death is but an 
incident in a fuller life, and is but an apparent evil. No more 
tentative gropings ; no more hopes half smothered by fears ; 
in place of the twilight of faith in which men have walked, 
struggling up the Hill Difficulty in doubt and perplexity, the 
clear light of demonstrative evidence, and encouragement from 
those respectable witnesses, the mathematicians. More than 
this, one could scarcely ask. 

To the dweller in Everybody's World the strangest part of it 
is that all this can be had literally for a song. One must, to 
be sure, reflect upon the song, and get out of it all that is 
latent in it. It is not every one who is capable of conducting 
such reflections to a successful issue. Our novice applies 
himself with diligence to the volume of instructions, and, 
finding himself in some perplexity still, he presents himself 
before one who has already accomplished the journey, is 
supposed to be familiar with the route, and may, perhaps, 



200 The World We Live In 

save him from errors of oversight and from lack of compre- 
hension. 

"Everything," he is told at the outset, "will depend upon 
the fundamental questions : 'What is an idea ? ' and 'How can 
an idea be related to Reality ? ' 2 In answering these questions 
we must begin by noticing that every idea has meaning or 
purpose, and is not merely something which concerns the 
intellect ; it is in every case an expression of will. It is the 
inner purpose of an idea, its internal meaning, that con- 
stitutes the idea's primary and essential feature. 3 This 
internal meaning is nothing else than the purpose embodied 
in an idea. 4 

"Now, ideas have not only an internal meaning, but they 
have what appears to be an external meaning. That is to say, 
they have their objects, and they seem to refer beyond them- 
selves. In this sense I say : 'The melody sung by me not only 
is an idea internally meaning the embodiment of my purpose at 
the instant when I sing it, but also is an idea that means, and 
that in this sense externally means, the object called, say, a 
certain theme which Beethoven composed.' 5 In the same 
sense, when you think of your absent friend, you fulfill an inner 
purpose by getting the idea present to your mind. But 
you also regard your idea of him as, in an external sense, 
meaning the real being called your friend, in so far as it refers 
to him and resembles him. The external meaning appears to 
be very different from the internal, and to transcend it. 6 

"The external meanings of ideas are conveniently and 
popularly conceived as something quite separate from the 
ideas, and which the ideas must imitate, if we are to arrive 
at truth. The notion that the idea and its object are, indeed, 
sundered is erroneous, as we shall soon see. Nevertheless, it 
is convenient to speak, for certain purposes, as though they 
were. 7 

"These preliminaries settled," continues the speaker, "let 



Another World of the New Idealism 201 

us come back to the song under discussion. Suppose you sing 
a song. Good. In the song which you decided to sing, and 
to which you have actually treated me, you have a purpose 
embodied in the passing moment, an internal meaning. But 
that is by no means all. Here you may begin to spread your 
wings. 

"Did you not purpose to sing that song — that, and no 
other ? Was it not composed by Beethoven ? Then, did you 
not, if you purposed to sing that song, purpose to sing a com- 
position by Beethoven? And, of course, that implies the 
existence of Beethoven, who was a particular man, not a 
floating abstraction. He, in his turn, implies parents, a house, 
a city, a state, the round world, the starry heavens, a stupen- 
dous past, and an endless future. Could that song be just 
that song if it were not a song composed by a particular man, 
in a particular place, at a particular time, all of which par- 
ticulars are rendered determinate only by their place in a great 
system of things which identifies each as itself and not another ? 
Remember, you purposed to sing that song, not an abstraction, 
but that song. Viewed thus reflectively, that song spreads, 
as every fragment of fact must spread, until it embraces every- 
thing in heaven and upon the earth. The things which have 
appeared external, and seemingly beyond your reach, are only 
apparently external. ' We draw our breath in pain ' while we 
sunder internal meanings from external meanings. But, 
attaining to insight, we see that all that seems to be external 
to anything else is not really external. It is only an aspect of 
the internal meaning of every idea, however fragmentary. 8 

"In order that you may see clearly that the object of an 
idea cannot really be external to the idea, let me call your 
attention to a very significant truth. Suppose that, when I 
asked you to sing a song, you had purposed to sing a composi- 
tion by Verdi, but that, through some defect in your nervous 
system — such things may happen — your tongue had uttered 



202 The World We Live In 

what you did not intend, and you had actually sung a song by 
Beethoven. Would, in this case, the song sung be the object 
of the purpose you had in mind ? 9 

"Do you not see that every idea must intend its object, if 
the thing really is to be its object, and not something indifferent 
to it? The object of an idea must be predetermined by the 
idea, if it is to be the external meaning of that idea, and it must 
thus be predetermined in every particular. An idea can be 
judged only by what it intends. 10 'What the idea always 
aims to find in its object is nothing whatever but the idea's 
own conscious purpose or will, embodied in some more deter- 
minate form than the idea by itself alone at the time consciously 
possesses.' 11 One's true will is 'one's present imperfect con- 
scious will in some more determinate form.' 12 In seeking its 
object, any idea whatever seeks absolutely nothing but its 
own explicit, and, in the end, complete, determination as this 
conscious purpose, embodied in this one way. The complete 
content of the idea's own purpose is the only object of which 
the idea can ever take note. This alone is the Other that 
is sought. 13 

"It follows thus, that when you purposed to sing that song, 
your purpose was vastly more significant than you heedlessly 
imagined it to be. It really embraced implicitly the whole 
Universe, the only Reality, the Absolute, or God. 14 God, 
assumed by the unreflective to be external to and far from us, 
is given in your own internal meaning, when you do no more 
than sing a song." 

"You appall me," interposes the astonished listener. "Did 
I really accomplish all this ? It suggests to me the expansion 
of the Jinn released from the bottle by the fisherman. Not- 
withstanding the argument, I do not seem to see clearly how 
Beethoven's father is to be extracted from a given song by 
merely developing its internal meaning. I must take time to 
reflect upon the matter. But first let us consider a difficulty, 



Another World of tlie New Idealism 203 

touching the infinite spread of the song, which has seemed to me 
a serious one. 

"Granted that 'the thinking process itself is a process 
whereby at once meanings tend to become determinate, and 
external objects tend to become internal meanings ' ; 15 admit- 
ting, for the moment, that if my process of determining my 
own internal meaning simply proceeds to its own limit, I 
shall face Being, become one with it, and internally possess 
it ; 16 am I not plainly told in the Book that it is hopeless to 
try to carry such a process to its limit ? If the song is to be 
that song, none other in heaven or earth, it must, I am given to 
understand, have its place in a limitless universe. 'Song,' 
taken in general, is abstract. If we stop anywhere short of the 
infinite, we seem to have what is relatively abstract, and which 
needs its completion and further determination by being 
assigned a broader setting. It appears to follow that anything 
short of the infinite is relatively unreal. On the basis of such 
considerations, I am informed that only at the Limit do we 
face the Real, the Individual Object, or Being. 17 And yet 
the attainment of this limit is declared impossible. Who may 
hope by climbing the golden stair of the mathematical series 
1,1 + ^, 1 + \ + \, etc., to reach the heavenly 2, toward which 
the stair seems to ascend, but which it never quite attains ? 18 

"This difficulty is expressly dwelt upon in the Book. The 
Real is declared to be ' that determinate object which all our 
ideas and experiences try to decide upon, and to bring within 
the range of our internal meanings ; while, by the very na- 
ture of our fragmentary hypotheses and of our particular ex- 
periences, it always lies Beyond.' 19 Never, we are told, do 
we, in our human process of experience, reach the Reality, 
the Universe, God. 'It is for us the object of love and of hope, 
of desire and of will, of faith and of work, but never of present 
finding.' 20 

"Does it not seem to follow of itself that the Universe or 



204 The World We Live In 

God is not really given in the purpose to sing a song, but is at 
best an unattainable object of search ? We are informed, to be 
sure, that every finite idea is consciously in search of its own 
wholeness ; 21 and that this wholeness, the object of the idea, 
is guaranteed by the idea itself. 22 But it is surely a problem to 
explain how an idea, which, on the surface, appears to be a 
finite thing, primarily an 'internal meaning,' can guarantee 
to me the actual existence of a limitless Universe! " 

"When all seems lost," replies the guide, "it is wise to turn 
to the mathematicians. See how much they can extract 
from a few initial definitions ? They arrive at results of which 
they had no inkling at the outset of their inquiry. And yet 
are not the results what the initial definitions meant ? 23 

"That the mathematicians actually can help us may be 
made quite plain by a little excursion into elementary mathe- 
matics. Anybody who can count may follow the argument, 
which is, indeed, extremely simple. I shall content myself 
with a single illustration, for where the principle is precisely 
the same, one is as good as a dozen. 

" Suppose you begin to count the whole numbers. You have 
i, 2, 3, and so on without end. There really is no end, no 
last number, either to God or to man. 24 But you can define 
the series. It is a series in which each successive term is 
made by adding one unit to the term preceding. Do not 
attempt to count the numbers ; you will always stick help- 
lessly in the finite, if you go about things in that way. Just 
think of the series of whole numbers. Is not that series infinite ? 
Are not all the whole numbers ' given at one stroke ' 25 in the pur- 
pose to think of that series ? 

"Do you not see that here 'a single purpose, definable as 
One, demands for its realization a multitude of particulars 
which could not be a limited multitude without involving 
the direct defeat of the purpose itself'? 26 All the numbers, 
therefore, exist. Remember that, as mere validity, as an 



Another World of the New Idealism 205 

unlimited possibility of counting, the series would have no real 
Being. 27 ' If there is validity, there is then an object more than 
merely valid which gives the very conception of validity its 
own meaning.' 28 Thus, the series of whole numbers exists 
as an actual completed whole, as Real, 29 and this infinity is 
given at one stroke in the definition. Let this serve as an 
illustration of the way in which every idea, however fragmen- 
tary, guarantees the existence of its Object, the Unlimited 
Universe, or God." 30 

"In such reasonings I cannot follow you," is the response. 
" That I can have the purpose to keep on adding one unit, I 
can understand. I have, however, been informed that the 
Real or the Beyond is to be regarded as the Limit to the series 
of my attempts to spread. Here I am told that, while there 
is no Limit, either to God or man, yet the series is a whole, 
is completed, and has actual existence as a completed whole. 
These uses of the words 'whole' and 'completed' seem strange 
to me. 

"And what you say suggests to me two fresh difficulties. 
I do not seem to comprehend how, if the series really is given 
at one stroke in its definition, and is not to be completed by 
counting, my present thought is to be regarded as an incom- 
plete embodiment of the series. Have I not the series 'at 
one stroke ' ? What more can even a Divine Mind have ? 
It cannot know the series up to the very end. And as to this 
perplexing guarantee of actual existence which seems offered 
by the definition — let me illustrate it in a concrete instance. 
Having just eaten a cherry, and found it good, I resolve that 
I shall eat a fresh cherry at the end of every minute from now 
on, world without end. There are practical difficulties in the 
way of completely embodying such a resolve, I admit. The 
supply of cherries may give out. I shall certainly die, to 
adduce no other contingency. But the practical difficulties 
of carrying out such a resolve are by no means greater 



206 The World We Live In 

than are those of producing such a perfect map of Eng- 
land as is described by the learned author of the Book — 
a map which contains maps within maps in an endless de- 
scending series. Such practical difficulties are by him set 
aside as irrelevant to the problem of the Purpose and its 
Meaning. 31 Let us keep to that. Does every definition of an 
infinite series guarantee the actual existence of the individual 
members of the series ? May I assume that a cherry will 
somewhere be eaten at every minute through future time in 
order that bloodless Validity may make way for breezy 
Reality ? 

"But I waive these objections here, for I wish to save time 
and to come back to a very serious difficulty touching the 
song discussed above. I mentioned it a few moments ago, 
but deferred its discussion. I am now ready to take it up 
again. Admitting that I can, following a general rule, keep 
on adding one unit, I cannot see that all this has any bearing 
whatever on the problem how I can begin with a song and 
develop out of its inner purpose any such variety of content 
as Abraham, Anthracite Coal, the Andes, Ararat, and all the 
other objects which I seem compelled to look up in an ency- 
clopedia, if I am to know them at all. Is there any procedure 
known to science by which the most complicated of musical 
compositions may be made to spawn in this way ? If there is, 
I have never heard of it." 

"Wait," is the answer, "we are not yet through with the 
mathematicians. You must be taught to know yourself. 
Dedekind, who has written so ingeniously of numbers, made a 
suggestion which finds a novel and fruitful development in 
your Book of Instructions. 32 Just consider what is implied 
in your having a thought of any kind. For instance, you 
think, 'To-day is Tuesday'; and you resolve to reflect upon 
this thought. It follows that, in virtue of your one plan of 
reflecting upon this thought, there ideally clusters about the 



Another World of the New Idealism 207 

thought an endless system of thoughts of which this thought 
is the first. The series runs : this is one of my thoughts ; yes, 
and this last reflection is one of my thoughts ; and so on with- 
out end. 33 The system is known to be infinite, not by counting 
its members, but by virtue of the universal plan that each of 
its members shall be followed by another. The whole system 
is given at once by the definition of the undertaking. 34 Such 
an endless system is an ideally completed Self, a completely 
self-conscious thought. 35 Thus every self includes an infinite 
diversity and this diversity results from the 'undisturbed ex- 
pression of the intellect's internal meanings.' 36 

"I beg you now to lay hold of still another plank thrown 
to us by the mathematicians. Have they not made it clear 
that, when we are speaking of infinites, it is not true that the 
whole is greater than the part ? 37 Each self, however partial 
it maybe, is ' infinite in its own kind,' 38 and need not be con- 
ceived to be in any sense less complicated than is the Universe, 
or Absolute. 39 It may be conceived as a Part equal to the 
Whole, and finally united, as such equal, to the whole wherein 
it dwells. 40 Would not a perfect map of England, however 
small, completely represent the whole of England? and 
would not its degree of complication be the same ? 41 

"Now we are ready for a higher flight, which will reveal to 
us the multiplicity of concrete and varied contents that seem 
to give you trouble. Nothing exists independently of any- 
thing else; hence, 'knowledge, in facing reality at all, faces 
in some wise the whole of it at once, and the only question is 
how this at any instant takes place.' 42 You can, for example, 
think now of Asia, and you seem to yourself to be thinking of 
nothing else. But Asia has Being, and the rest of the world 
has Being, too. All the objects other than Asia cannot be 
wholly other than Asia, or they would have no Being. It is 
clear, then, that in knowing Asia you in some sense know 
all other objects. 'Whoever knows any concrete object, 



208 The World We Live In 

knows in a sense all objects. In what sense is he, then, ignorant 
of any?' 43 

"The answer to this important question is simple : what we 
now concretely know is related to what we do not now con- 
cretely know as ' the objects which our attention focuses are 
related to what, although present, is lost in the background of 
consciousness. Ignorance always means inattention to details.' u 
' Our finitude means, then, an actual inattention, — a lack of 
successful interest, at this conscious instant, in more than a very 
few of the details of the universe. But the infinitely mumerous 
other details are in no wise wholly absent from our knowledge, 
even now.'' 45 Any one of them could now be known, if only we 
were able to attend to its actual presence. 46 But 'a certain 
attitude of will, just now unchangeable by us, has determined 
each of us to a present stubborn inattention to the vast totality 
which we just called in our discussion the rest of the world.' 
'The inattention in question hides from us not only the par- 
ticular facts themselves, but the reflective knowledge of what 
it is that we ourselves will.' 47 

"Thus, you see that, in knowing that song and in willing 
to sing it, you do, indeed, accomplish vastly more than you 
have been accustomed to suppose. Your true internal mean- 
ing embraces all Being. In knowing the song you know all — 
from the song you inevitably pass to the Unlimited Universe 
or God. The one seemingly trivial internal meaning defines 
and gives at one stroke, as should now be clear to you, all that 
is, has been, and shall be — the Object, which appeared to be, 
but really is not, external. Hence, if you can sing a song, 
God exists, and ..." 

But the boldness of the flight has taken away the breath of 
one accustomed to walking with pains and labor on the rough 
crust of Everybody's World. The listener is bewildered; 
he has lost his bearings. It seems plain that, if he is, indeed, 
omniscient, his stubborn inattention must be quite all that it is 



Another World of the New Idealism 209 

accused of being ; for, although he is aware that he napped his 
wings with the utmost energy, he cannot feel sure that he 
moved forward at all. He will take the Book of Instructions, 
will follow its directions implicitly, and will essay the flight 
himself. Afterwards he will discuss the route with his guide, 
and will attempt to determine definitely the exact spot upon 
which he touches ground again when he descends from the 
upper air. 

In the second interview with his mentor he shows himself 
disappointed, but no longer bewildered or in doubt. "I 
took the Book in my hand," he declares, "and following 
minutely the instructions there set forth, I sailed repeatedly 
over the course indicated. I am now confident that I never 
really moved at all. Six several times I found myself, at the 
end of my exertions, in precisely the place from which I made 
my ascent, and I see that I might have gotten on quite as well 
without making any effort at all. 

"The journey is a dialectical illusion, and is a very skillful 
contrivance. The problem was to set out from a mere song 
and to end with God. To get so much out of so little seemed 
impossible, and the method appeared to have no connection 
with the well-tried methods by which human knowledge 
actually increases. And, indeed, the task is an impossible 
one ; but please observe that this task is not even attempted. 
The author does not really start with the internal meaning of 
a song and expand it into an infinite universe. What he does 
is far different. 

"Recall to mind that you asked me to sing a song, and then 
pointed out to me that I had purposed to sing that song, a 
song composed by Beethoven, a particular man, belonging to a 
particular time and place, and thus assigned his niche in this 
particular system of things and no other. You did not, in 
other words, extract Beethoven or anything else from that 
' song' but from 'that song.' The difference is world wide. 



210 The World We Live hi 

'That song,' with the emphasis upon the 'that,' means, as the 
Book would express it, the song 'rendered determinate' or 
'completely embodied.' Now, 'that song embodied' is a mere 
euphemism for ' the infinite universe of things with that 
song in it.' 

"The former expression is more easy to misconceive than 
is the latter; and, if we omit the word 'embodied' and say 
briefly 'that song,' it is still easier to fall into misconception. 
What more natural than to suppose that one is talking about 
the song and not about the Universe? The expression 
deceived me for a time, and I actually supposed that, by some 
exercise of ingenuity, the World or God was to be extracted 
from a song. 

"What the dialectical argument actually amounts to is this : 
Given that song in its place in an Infinite Universe, then we 
may be assured that there is an Infinite Universe with that 
song in it. To this statement I should not for a moment 
demur; but it seems to me that I have been compelled to 
make a feint of traveling a prodigious distance in order to 
find myself just where I was standing at the outset. 

"And I am convinced that the learned and ingenious author 
of the Book has unwittingly deceived himself as he deceived 
me. It is a very striking circumstance that, in the Seventh 
Lecture of the First Volume, we find a number of references 
to the inductive process by which, as has long been known in 
Everybody's World, we attain to a knowledge that any song 
is that song — in other words, to the knowledge that there is a 
Universe at all. To be sure, this inductive process is given 
but a half-hearted recognition. Although the distinction is 
made between 'internal experience' and 'external experience/ 
the latter is treated as in some sense an impostor. It is termed : 
'what is usually called external experience' ; 48 'what is called 
external experience'; 49 'so-called external experience.' 50 
Nevertheless, while, in the first part of the Seventh Lecture, 



Another World of the New Idealism 211 

the effort is made to prove that much may be known by having 
recourse to internal meanings alone, it is expressly admitted 
that external experience 'furnishes a positive content which 
our human internal meanings can never construct for them- 
selves.' 51 

"But in the second half of the same Lecture the significance 
of observation and induction is driven back by the growing 
impetus of the notion that no idea can have any object except 
in so far as it selects it for itself. The conclusion is drawn 
that the object of an idea 'can have no essential character 
which is not predetermined by the purpose, the internal 
meaning, the conscious intent, of that idea itself.' 52 That is 
to say, the World is, after all, to be extracted from the 'internal 
meaning' of the idea. That it is, in fact, extracted from the 
idea as 'embodied,' i.e. from the World, is not clear to the 
author's mind. 53 Were it clear, he would have to ask himself : 
By what process does any man learn that there is a Universe 
from which we may tautological ly infer the Universe ? 

"Instead of seriously raising this question and answering 
it in the spirit of the science of logic, he has recourse to an 
assumption paralyzing to the plain man and to the man of 
science, to wit, to the assumption that Everybody is omnis- 
cient, but is inattentive — that Everybody knows and wills, at 
every instant, the whole Universe, but stubbornly determines 
not to be interested in its details. 54 An uneasy consciousness 
that all is not quite right with this extraction of the World 
from every finite idea expresses itself in a concession not easy 
to reconcile with the course of the argument : ' Of course, my 
private will, when viewed as a mere force in nature, does not 
create the rest of nature. But my conscious will as expressed 
in my ideas does logically determine what objects are my 
objects.' 55 

"The author does not, then, see clearly that he is simply 
assuming the Universe and then inferring from it the Universe. 



212 The World We Live In 

He fancies that he is compelled so to stretch the 'purpose' 
of a song as to bring within its circuit all there is. And to 
this end he invokes the mathematician. 

"The mathematician can do some things admirably. To 
those who are not mathematicians, it seems astonishing how 
much he can deduce apparently from a few definitions. There 
is, to be sure, still some dispute as to what is the whole ground 
from which he reasons, and as to the real significance of his 
results. Of the usefulness of his work, and of the exactitude 
of his processes as compared with what seems attainable in 
certain other fields, there can be no question. 

"Nevertheless, there are things which the mathematician, 
as such, should not be called upon to do. He may, not as 
mathematician, but as man, carry the tune at a religious meet- 
ing. But neither as mathematician nor as man can he extract 
from that tune, by any iterative process, 56 the children of 
Israel or a map of the other side of the moon. He appears, 
it is true, in his professional capacity, to be able to start with 
little and to end with much. Yet the mathematician's 'much' 
is in no case a 'much' of the sort in question. He is an irrele- 
vant witness and may be ruled out of the court. 

"Nor is he of the least help in proving that each self is 
infinitely complicated, and may implicitly contain an infinity 
of ideas, thus representing a boundless Universe as an ideally 
perfect map of England might represent England. 

"Let us grant him, for the sake of argument, that, if we 
have an idea, we may reflect that we can have an idea of that 
idea, and so on without end. What does such an infinity 
amount to ? Let the idea in question be the idea of a cat. 
Can the countless repetitions indicated in any wise prove that 
he who has the idea has in his mind anything save the idea of 
a cat ? The doubtful infinity accorded him is, so to speak, a 
vertical one. It is valued by no man, and is never supposed to 
indicate broad information. 



Another World of the New Idealism 213 

"If the mathematician is really to help me, let him show 
me how, from the idea of a cat, I can pass to that of a dog, 
from that to the ideas of all the animals in Africa, and can thus 
continue, developing a horizontal infinity, which fairly repre- 
sents the complicated structure of the Universe. 

"The assumption of human omniscience and invincible 
inattention is plainly an assumption and nothing more. It 
is an assumption denied by our whole experience of men and 
of things. That it is made can only mean that the author 
does not see how, without assuming the unlimited Universe, he 
can demonstrate that there is an unlimited Universe, 57 and 
can develop its contents deductively. He conceives that the 
Universe is in every passing moment; and yet, manifestly, 
it is not precisely in every passing moment, but must be 
developed out of it by dialectic. It is for aid in showing that 
it is not incredible that the infinite should be developed deduc- 
tively from the fragmentary and the finite that the author is 
driven to consort with the mathematician. As we have seen, 
the mathematician is an irrelevant witness. 

"Let us leave these misunderstandings and come back to 
the real argument. So far as I can see, it amounts only to this : 
Given this song in an Infinite and Only Universe, then we maybe 
assured that there is an Infinite and Only Universe. The further 
statement that the Universe is to be conceived as Thought and 
Will rests, of course, upon the idealistic assumption that 
everything that is must be consciously known by some one. 58 
To some very acute minds this has appeared self-evident. 59 
Nevertheless, the assumption is combated by the Realist, 
who complains here of a confusion of subjective and objective, 
which, he claims, can very well be avoided, if one will not set 
up a Realism of straw, and then proceed to demolish it. 

"I cannot, hence, admit that reflection upon the 'internal' 
and the 'external' meaning of ideas guarantees the existence 
of God at all. But such is my eagerness to get a good view of 



214 The World We Live In 

the whole doctrine, that I beg you to forget that I have been 
compelled to withhold my assent so far. Let us assume that 
we have gotten a Universe, that is to be conceived as Thought 
and Will, and that it may properly be called God. Show me, 
I beg, more in detail, how this Universe is to be conceived, and 
point out the comfort and consolation that are to be had in 
its contemplation." 

It is a good deal to ask, for no great results can reasonably be 
hoped for in the case of one who seems constitutionally unfitted 
for dialectic flights. How can he who has failed to assure 
himself of the existence of God, by grasping the significance 
of "internal" and "external" meanings, expect to reach by a 
similar path the comforting truths of human Freedom and 
Immortality ? Nevertheless, the guide is induced to continue 
the exposition, though the continuation is reserved for another 
interview. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE GLORY OF IT 

We all accept a World of some kind, even those of us who 
are by no means clear touching the validity of our title to it. 
Who can blame us for hoping that it may turn out to be a 
good sort of a world in the end ? But those who have reflected 
upon the lessons to be learned from the history of philosophy 
are aware, as was Pepys, that disappointment may follow on 
the heels of "overexpectation." He who has watched with a 
pang the sunset splendors of Berkeley's World as Idea fade into 
the ashen hues of common, if real, cloud, distrusts the shining 
vision that appears in the west two centuries later. Or, if 
distrust is too strong an expression, let us say that his attitude 
toward it is characterized by caution. When a prospectus 
promises great things, he who has money to invest begins to 
look narrowly into the question of security. 

The new lesson commences, as it should, in the contempla- 
tion of Nature. "If we are to understand what we mean by 
Material Nature," says the guide, "and why we believe it to 
be real, we must ask: 'What internal meaning of ours seeks 
an embodiment such that, to our minds, only outer Nature 
can furnish this embodiment ? ' * Now, our belief in the material 
world is inseparably bound up with our belief in the existence 
of our fellow-men. Nature is a realm known to or knowable 
by various men. 2 The popular error which assumes that we 
directly know men's bodies, and only indirectly, and by an 
interpretation of their words, actions, and expressions, know 
that men have minds and what their minds are like, must 



216 The World We Live In 

be abandoned. 3 We know that our fellows are real and have 
an inner life of their own, because they furnish us with more 
ideas — -they help us to our complete embodiment, our 'full 
meaning,' our 'hidden Reality.' 4 

"It is, thus, the spread of the 'internal meaning' — to 
which you demur — that furnishes us both with our fellow- 
men and with an external world. That the latter is dependent 
on the former is clear from the following considerations : 
Take such an object as the Sun. We think of it as external, 
as independent. What does this mean ? It means that other 
men see the sun when I do not, 'hence, its existence goes wholly 
beyond that of my private consciousness, and persists in my 
absence.' While I sleep, men in other lands see the sun, as 
social communication teaches me. I learn by common report 
that it shone before I was born. I come to believe that it will 
shine for future generations. It is, thus, something inde- 
pendent of each, but verifiable by each. 5 And physical nature 
as a whole is a name for a collection of just such objects — for 
the series of objects that men have been able ' to agree upon 
as the common basis of definite acts of cooperation.' It is a 
conventional something, a socially significant tool, taken up 
for the purpose of mutual communication." 6 

The physical world, as it seems, then, enjoys an essentially 
Berkeleyan existence in the New Idealism, as in the Old. Its 
being is bolstered up by the concurrence of Minds. What 
more natural than that it should again present itself as our 
slave and not as our master ? It is pointed out that we should 
not regard Nature as fundamentally mechanical, or its laws 
as absolutely unvarying. 7 Are not the "seemingly unvarying 
laws of nature" something agreed upon for mutual conven- 
ience ? 8 It is indicated that we must not take too seriously 
the contrast between matter and mind ; nor, for that matter, 
the sciences which occupy themselves with the physical. 
Have the special sciences a right to pretend to reveal to us the 



The Glory of It 217 

ultimate truth about the nature of things? Is the contrast 
between mind and matter ultimate ? 9 

"Our internal meanings," continues the guide, "possess a 
reference to a realm beyond themselves, within which we 
men rind our place. Out of this realm we have come. Into 
it, at death, we seem to go. This realm is Nature. 10 But what 
is Nature? There undoubtedly is an apparently material 
world, and we are aware of a ' more or less regular routine ' of 
phenomena. 11 Nevertheless, evolution bridges the chasm 
between what we call ' dead matter ' and that which indubitably 
shows signs of mind. They are at heart alike. 12 All nature is 
alive. Our experience of nature is but a hint of a vaster realm 
of life and meaning of which we are a part, and of which the 
final unity is God. 13 

"Thus, the contrast between material and mental depends 
upon the accidents of our human point of view. 14 In nature 
in general we have signs of a vast realm of finite consciousness. 
All is fluent, all seeks ideals. 15 For us the important question 
is : How are we to conceive the relation between our little 
selves and the great Whole to which they belong? To this 
problem let us address ourselves. 

"At this point I am compelled to enter into an abstruse 
matter, but one of the utmost importance to our doctrine. 
This is our most dizzying flight, and what follows will be easy 
and reassuring. Be prepared to mount. 

"Our idealistic concept of Being implies, as you have seen, 
that 'whatever is, is consciously known as the fulfillment of 
some idea, and is so known either by ourselves at this moment, 
or by a consciousness inclusive of our own.' 16 It has been made 
clear that our present consciousness is but a fragment of our 
whole meaning — in us the 'internal' has not as yet absorbed 
the 'external.' It follows at once that the whole world of 
truth and being must exist only as present, in all its variety, 
its wealth, its relationships, its entire constitution, to the unity 



218 The World We Live In 

of a single consciousness, which includes both our own and all 
finite conscious meanings in one final eternally present insight. 17 
The significance of this I develop at length : 

"Every one must admit that we are conscious of change, 
that is, of a succession of events. Together, the events con- 
stitute a temporal order. Each event is over and past when 
the next one appears on the scene. This we may call the 
successive aspect of the temporal order. 18 

"On the other hand, who could be conscious of a succession 
of events, unless at least two of the events were given in con- 
sciousness together ? 19 The sense in which the one event is 
over and gone when the other comes is not the sense in which 
both events are experienced together. When we reflect upon 
this experiencing of the events together, we have to do with a 
second aspect of time. We may, if we choose, when considering 
this aspect, say that both events are present 'at once.' 20 

"It is most important not to misconceive this. All that it 
means is that our consciousness is characterized by what has 
been called a 'time-span.' The word 'present' has two quite 
distinct senses, which should never be confused with each 
other. When we say the two events are 'present at once,' 
we do not mean, and must not mean, that they have their 
being in the same moment of time. The one is always past 
and gone when the other is here. This is a matter of funda- 
mental importance for our conception of time and of eternity. 21 

"Now, we may know time by 'direct experience,' or we may 
have of it a 'relatively indirect conception.' 22 We directly 
perceive change only as a very brief span ; but we may think 
of all the changes that have taken place during a given minute, 
hour, day, year, or century. No one hesitates to say 'the 
present year' or ' the present century.' The 'specious present' 
thus indicated is never, of course, directly included in our 
'time-span,' which is far too brief for this. We 'think of 
these times, as I may 'think of the State of Massachusetts, 



The Glory of It 219 

although a very little bit of it can be embraced directly by my 
present field of vision. 

"Suppose, however, that some Being enjoyed a far greater 
'time-span' than we do. Would not such divisions of time be 
perceived by it 'at once'? To be sure, any such division of 
time is time, and the events which take place in it are all of 
them successive; some of them no longer exist, while others 
do not yet exist. Do not forget that the 'at once' above 
employed does not indicate that any two of the events in 
question exist at the same time. It has a quite unique sig- 
nificance which, as I have warned you, must not be confused 
with any other. 23 In the usual temporal sense of the words 
'at once,' two events, such as the tick of a clock and the fall 
of a shutter, may occur 'at once,' or 'be present together.' 
This is obviously a very different matter. It means that the 
events in question are simultaneous. 

"With this we are ready for a contemplation of the contrast 
between the Temporal and the Eternal, with all that it implies. 
According to our Idealism, we men must view the whole 
World-life as a temporal order. There is no last moment in 
the evolution of things. All events belong to the series which 
is characterized by a 'no longer' and a 'not yet.' 24 But the 
Absolute, the Universe, God, enjoys a 'time-span' which is 
infinite. God is not shut up to an indirect knowledge of great 
stretches of time, as we men are. To Him, everything is 
present 'at once,' in the peculiar sense of the expression that 
has been made clear above. This is the Mum simul regarding 
which men discoursed in the Middle Ages — this is Eternity, 
as contrasted with Time. 25 

"Thus, all the events which make up the World-life are in a 
Temporal Order. Nevertheless, since the totality of temporal 
events can have no events preceding or succeeding it, but is 
'present at once' to the 'time-span' of the Absolute, we may 
also say that all the events that make up the World-life stand 



220 The World We Live In 

in an Eternal Order. The Eternal Consciousness is not in 
time ; the complete series of temporal happenings may be 
regarded as an Individual Whole, and, thus, as eternal. 26 
The whole of time contains 'a single expression of the divine 
Will' and hence, 'despite its endlessness,' the time- world is 
'present' as a single whole to the Absolute, 'whose Will this 
is, and whose life all this sequence embodies.' 27 

"At last we have attained the desired height, and may 
descend at our ease to reap the fruits of our exertions. The 
Promised Land lies before us. The glory of it is not to be 
hidden. God's will is eternally accomplished. Man is free. 
God knows man's sufferings and disappointments, and makes 
good his deficiencies. In spite of his apparent finitude and 
failure, man may be assured that his true will, which is God's 
will, is not left unsatisfied. Death is banished. Immortality 
is brought to light. ' In Eternity all is done, and we, too, rest 
from our labors.' 28 

"The Freedom of man need not long detain us, for it can 
now be demonstrated in a sentence or two. Listen. Causal 
explanation never has to do with what is individual about 
events. 29 Every finite fact is a positive part of the unique 
divine experience, and is, therefore, itself unique. Your own 
present will is a stage or case of the expression of the divine 
purpose at a given point of time ; it, too, is unique. 30 What- 
ever is unique is not, as such, causally explicable. 31 If you 
will at all, it is evident that you must will uniquely. It is, then, 
you who just here are God's will, or who just here consciously 
act for the whole. You are in so far free. 32 Have no fear 
that you are laid in bonds by God's foreknowledge. There 
can be no foreknowledge of the Unique. 33 

"And now for Immortality. Bear in mind that the rational 
being with whom you deal, when you observe an animal's 
dimmer hints of rationality, may phenomenally be represented 
rather by the race as a whole than by any one individual. 



The Glory of It 221 

The individual animal may be regarded as 'a temporally 
brief section of a person' — the race is the person, with a 
span of consciousness far longer than ours ; it is the sentence, 
the individual is the word in it. 34 In some such way must we 
think of man. As individuals we are differentiations from — 
temporally brief sections of — a finite conscious experience of 
presumably a much longer time-span than our present one. 
This finite consciousness of longer time-span, indicated to us 
in the phenomena of memory and of race-instinct, is individu- 
ated, is rational, is a live being, and is continuous in some sense 
with our own individuality. 35 The birth or death of an indi- 
vidual man may mean ' the occurrence of something interesting 
in a shorter or longer time-span ' — that of the larger inclusive 
consciousness. 36 

"But why stop with the race? Why not go on to the 
conclusion? The Self of the 'finite internal meaning,' the 
temporal and fragmentary Self endowed with 'our present 
flickering form of mortal consciousness,' dies with its own 
moment. Nevertheless, the Self completely embodied, that 
is, the Self which is identical with the Universe, or God, pos- 
sesses, in the Eternal World, 'a consciousness far transcending 
that of our present human type of momentary insight.' 'Our 
life, as hid from us now, in the life of God, has another form 
of consciousness than the one we now possess.' 37 

"Physical death seems, of course, to be an undeniable 
fact. 38 Our problem is : How is death possible at all as a 
real event ? We, as idealists, have a solution. To be, means 
to fulfill a purpose. Hence, if death is real, it is real only as 
fulfilling a purpose. But what purpose can be fulfilled by 
the ending of a fife whose purpose is not fulfilled? The 
answer is at once forthcoming : ' The purpose that can be 
fulfilled by the ending of such a life is necessarily a purpose 
that, in the eternal world, is consciously known and seen as 
continuous with, yes, as inclusive of, the very purpose whose 



222 The World We Live In 

fulfillment the temporal death seems to cut short.' 39 By whom 
is this purpose known ? It is known by some being who can 
say : 'This was my purpose, but temporarily I no longer seek 
its embodiment.' 40 'The life that is ended is thus viewed by 
the Absolute as followed, at some period of time, by another 
life that in its meaning is continuous with the first.' 41 Thus, 
the selective process in Nature is a process involving survival 
as well as death. 42 

"'Not otherwise, in our Idealistic World, is death possible. 
I can temporally die; but I myself, as larger individual, in 
the eternal world, see why I die ; and thus, in essence, my whole 
individuality is continuous in true meaning with the individ- 
uality that dies.' 43 You see, true Being is essentially a Whole 
Individual Fact, which does not send you beyond itself, and 
which is, therefore, in its wholeness, deathless. Where death 
is, Being in its Wholeness is not. 44 Do I make my meaning 
quite plain ? Remember that the true Self is always the 
Universe. What dies is the fragmentary, apparent, flickering 
Self of common experience. The Universe cannot die, can it ? 
Then man is immortal. 

"That God's Will is eternally accomplished scarcely needs 
proof. Does not the Universe exist, and is not the fact of 
its existence the accomplishment of God's Will ? That God 
knows our sorrows and shortcomings is self-evident. Must 
not everything that is, be known? And, since our true will 
is our will Completely Embodied, or, in other words, the 
Universe, is not our true will, which is God's Will, also accom- 
plished? 'Arise, then, freeman, stand forth in thy world. 
It is God's world. It is also thine.' 45 I give you time to reflect 
upon this doctrine. Behold before you the World of the New 
Idealism. Is not the vision inspiring ? " 

"I do not need time to reflect," is the answer. "I have read 
the Book ; I have listened ; and I have reflected while you 
spoke. More than ever am I convinced that your dialectic 



The Glory of It 223 

flight is only a seeming flight — that you have conjured up a 
mist of words, and have stood still. Let me sum up in plain 
language all that you have pointed out to me. 

"You have shown me that, given a song in its particular 
place in an Infinite Universe, we may be assured that there is 
an Infinite Universe with a song in it. This Universe you have 
called God. 

"You have told me that I am Free, because every individual 
thing in the Universe, as being that individual thing and 
nothing else, must be free. I share, then, it seems, my freedom 
with every rotting apple, which is always some particular 
apple, and with every writhing worm, which is always just 
this and no other worm. Upon such freedom I can set no 
particular value. 

"You have informed me that, when I die, the Universe 
will not die, but that other life will succeed the conscious life 
that I enjoy. This I never doubted ; but this is not what men 
mean by immortality. Nor does it make my mortality the 
less mortal to say that God knows my life, and my death, with 
whatever may succeed that, for me, melancholy event. Keep 
clearly in mind what God's knowledge amounts to. 

"Have you not yourself warned me against confusing the 
two senses of the expressions ' together ' and ' at once ' ? Have 
you not told me that the 'time-span' in no wise interferes 
with the successive character of events in time ? What has 
been, has been, to God and to man. What will be, will be, to 
God and to man. The 'eternity' you dwell upon does not 
imply that the 'no longer' and the 'not yet' of the world are 
abolished. It means only that the one 'time-span' stretches 
over both, just as my own 'time-span' includes two instants 
which are, nevertheless, successive, and one of which is gone 
when the other comes. We really should not say, then, that 
God sees all 'at one glance,' 46 for that is misleading. The 
expression suggests simultaneity. 



224 The World We Live In 

"No, according to your own doctrine, God knows the events 
which happen in the world, when they take place, and at no 
other time. He is constituted by the complexity of lesser 
consciousnesses that make up the world, and has no existence 
separate from these. 47 The divine act whereby He wills you, 
the individual, 'is identical with your own individual will, and 
exists not except as thus identical.' 48 'God does not tem- 
porally foreknow anything, excepting in so far as He is 
expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in 
time is the knowledge that finite Selves possess, in so far as 
they are finite.' 49 

"In the 'eternal' knowledge attributed to God, it is not 
implied that God knows at all times the individual happen- 
ings which constitute the Universe. By this 'eternal' knowl- 
edge, it seems, things ' are known as occurring like the chords 
in the musical succession, precisely when and how they 
actually occur.' 50 Thus, God knows my sorrows, in that I 
know them, and when I know them. He will know the 'sec- 
tion' of consciousness that is to succeed my mortal self, in 
that that 'section' will know itself. That every 'section' 
is supposed to have its place in a 'time-span' that covers the 
whole past, present, and future does not make the mortality 
of the individual 'section' the less mortal in any sense that 
interests mankind. Besides, why say God 'eternally knows' ? 
Does not His 'time-span' cover past, present, and future 
indifferently ? Is it not as just to say : God knew ? or, 
God will know ? Why give the preference to the present ? 

"I, then, am mortal — the I of which I am conscious, and 
in which my neighbors are interested. It is these our mortal 
nickering selves that are born, that marry and are given in 
marriage, that fall ill and call in the physician, that shrink 
from dissolution, that feel that their purposes are cut short by 
untimely death. To tell one of them that he really is identical 
with the Universe, if he only knew it, and that, hence, he cannot 



The Glory of It 225 

die, is to make a mock of his terrors. He knows that the 
Universe will not die, and he fears that he will. Only by care- 
fully concealing the unpalatable bolus of the truth one wishes 
to communicate under the bland sirups of an elaborate 
diction sweetened by comforting, if misleading, associations, 
can the sufferer be induced to swallow it and to look relieved. 

"On the accomplishment of God's Will and of our wills I 
need not dwell. The dialectic has not really transported me 
to a new world, where God, Freedom, and Immortality stand 
revealed. Our whole journey has been an illusion. On the 
other hand, although I have not moved forward, I am, in a 
sense, not precisely where I was to begin with. The mist 
which arose as you discoursed has blurred for me some of the 
rather unmistakable features of Everybody's World, my old, 
familiar, somewhat faulty, friend. 

"Thus, the physical world recognized by science and by com- 
mon thought has lost its sharpness of outline. It has been indi- 
cated that it exists only in minds, and is something taken up by 
minds as a convenient social convention. It has been asserted 
that its laws are only relatively uniform, and that, in general, 
the distinction between physical and mental, outer and inner, 
is not to be taken very seriously. That the individual hap- 
penings in the world are subject to causality has been denied. 
My respect for scientific method has suffered a diminution, in 
that the inductive processes, of which science makes so much, 
have been first accorded a grudging recognition and then 
abandoned for a deductive process at which science can only 
stand aghast. In various places the special sciences have been 
the object of remarks that sound disparaging. 51 The signifi- 
cance of mathematical reasonings seems to have been mis- 
apprehended in a way which suggests a much earlier period 
in the history of philosophy. 

"As to the relations of minds to bodies, and, through these, 
to each other — these have become highly obscure. It ap- 



226 The World We Live lit 

pears to be indicated that minds can, and yet cannot, be di- 
rectly aware of the contents of other minds. 52 Everybody, 
'completely embodied,' appears to be everybody else; and no 
one seems to be aware of what he thinks and wills. I have 
been informed that I am not really as ignorant as I had sup- 
posed, but am omniscient and am merely inattentive to the 
details of an infinite Universe, all of which details I might 
clearly know if I only would. 

"In all this, I have been carried far, surely, from the body 
of human knowledge, in which men have, and believe they 
have reason to have, confidence. On the whole, I have lost, 
and have not gained. I have failed to reach the Promised 
Land, and the ground actually beneath me has become less 
solid. With infinite thanks for your patience, I find I must 
seek some other guide. Should nothing better offer, I may 
even lay hands violently upon myself and turn Pragmatist. 
Only assure me that I am not grasping at the rainbow, and I 
will be discouraged by no difficulties and deterred by no 
dangers." 

Again the revolt of the man to whom the accepted body of 
human knowledge, admittedly defective and incomplete, still 
seems a thing too serious to be treated lightly ! of the man who 
is inclined to be mistrustful of the speculations of the solitary 
thinker, and who is dissatisfied if he cannot, from time to time, 
feel the ground with his foot. Shall we be with him ? or shall 
we be against him ? 

That, I suppose, will be decided for the individual largely 
by his temperament, in spite of what any one may say. There 
are those who take easily to speculative flights, and who do 
not find belief difficult. 

For my part, as a commonplace man, to whom Everybody's 
World seems a very undeniable thing, I must admit that my 
first impulse is to watch from the field the flight of the aviator, 
filled with admiration of his daring, his ingenuity, and his 



The Glory of It 227 

confidence in his own power to manage his machine. After 
that comes a certain curiosity to appreciate the real motives 
which inspired him to make such seemingly superhuman efforts 
and to face such unusual dangers. What does he seek? 
What does he hope to rind ? Is it an Unknowable ? the 
search is condemned from the outset. Is it that phantom 
Reality that played hide-and-seek with us in Chapter XIII, 
but always turned out, when cornered, to be mere Appearance, 
and no Reality at all? No man who understands the game 
will find it worth his while to play it. Is the object of the 
flight to rise, like the lark, into the upper air, to sing a tauto- 
logical song of illusive sweetness, and to descend upon the 
selfsame spot which saw the beginning of the flight ? Surely 
there must be some other aim than this. 

"Some in one way and some in others," said the Oxford 
Idealist, "we seem to touch and have communion with what 
is beyond the visible world. In various manners we find 
something higher, which both supports and humbles, both 
chastens and transports us. And, with certain persons, the 
intellectual effort to understand the universe is a principal 
way of thus experiencing the Deity." These are not the words 
of one the mutilation of whose nature has been made whole 
by the contemplation of a logical abstraction. One reads with 
unseeing eyes, if one finds in his book no more than the book 
itself seems to claim. 

Nor can one read sympathetically the work discussed in 
this and in the preceding chapter without seeing that it contains 
much more than the dry bones of theory. To examine these 
with care, and to decide whether they are properly articulated, 
is, to be sure, the duty of other philosophers. It is a some- 
what thankless task, as is all criticism ; but it is a necessary 
task, for he who advances a theory of his own leaves his work 
half done unless he points out that rival claimants to the field 
have not annulled his own claim. In the present instance, the 



228 The World We Live In 

ungrateful task of criticism is in part redeemed by the fact 
that a careful reading inspires the critic with a lively admira- 
tion of the boldness of the speculative genius possessed by the 
author, and with an agreeable sense of the breadth and fer- 
tility of his imagination. 

Nevertheless, when all is said, it is not the dry bones of 
theory that constitute the attraction of the book. It is its 
living spirit. And the connection between the two seems 
to be so slight that one is tempted to ask oneself : May it not 
be that the bony structure is a something relatively accidental ? 
May not the premises be a precipitate from the conclusion — 
a shell secreted to support a life which already existed and 
asserted its right to be? Philosophers are but men, after 
all ; and some of them are men of strongly religious instincts. 

The attitude of the author toward the world in which he 
finds himself has, viewed broadly, much in common with that 
taken by philosophers of various schools who find it impossible 
to admit his premises and to approve of his reasonings. It is 
not widely different from that of many plain men, who feel 
that they must accept Everybody's World, although they are 
more or less oppressed by its presence. Hence, it does not 
follow that, in rejecting the New Idealism, one must nec- 
essarily regard oneself as separated by an immeasurable abyss, 
in spirit and feeling, from the New Idealist. One may share 
with him an earnest desire to tread the streets of the Eternal 
City, while accepting with reservation the adage that all roads 
lead thither, and denying emphatically that the safest and the 
surest route is that which tempts the regions of the air. 



CHAPTER XVI 

PLAYING WITH THE WORLD 

''Faithful," said Christian as they journeyed, "we have 
been, by the inhabitants of the City of Destruction, abominably 
misunderstood. They accuse us of holding all sorts of wild 
opinions, of denying palpable fact, of shutting our eyes to the 
realities which every man of sense must admit. And they 
shamelessly maintain that we wander aimlessly and without 
method. 1 

"Now, the one thing that does characterize us as Pragmatists 
is our method. 2 We do not pretend to be dogmatic ; to con- 
struct a chart with fixed routes laid down upon it in ink, and 
to claim that all men must follow directions that we dictate. 
We allow to others the same freedom which we claim for 
ourselves. The salvation of the world must lie in an escape 
from the unendurable regularity of Everybody's World, the 
City of Destruction, the town upon which we have turned our 
backs. So much is quite plain. But it is not worth while to 
set out with a load upon one's back. He travels light who car- 
ries with him only one or two easy maxims : ' Wherever you 
may find yourself, look forward and not backwards ' ; ' Expect 
the unexpected ' ; ' Face the light ' — surely a simple matter 
if a man will only cast his own light before him as he walks. 

"The reasonableness of our journey cannot admit of dispute. 
What a town that was ! the sordid monotony of it ! Every 
day the sun rose, climbed to the zenith, and set, running his 
appointed course with a stupid lack of ingenuity which made 
him at every hour the slave of every mathematician with pen- 
229 



230 The World We Live In 

cil and paper. And the clocks which, left to themselves, might 
have shown some individuality, were drilled into a servile 
imitation of his wearisome mechanical precision. The men, 
little better, left their beds by them, worked by them, 
dined by them, and retired to rest at their command, like 
recruits under a Prussian sergeant. Everything seemed or- 
dered. The thermometer rose and fell at the bidding of the 
heat and cold ; the barometer played the courtier to its over- 
lord the weather; and even the weather, which has every- 
where shown its self-respect by raising its voice for freedom, 
was, there is strong reason to believe, secretly obeying instruc- 
tions passed on to it unobstrusively, but none the less imperi- 
ously, by some other power. The Future seemed to rise 
helplessly from the ashes of the Past — a fettered Phcenix, 
the very color of whose feathers could be foretold. And the 
past behavior of men and things was anxiously scrutinized be- 
fore any one had the courage to predict what might be expected 
from men and things on days as yet unborn. Science raged 
unchecked, saving some from disaster and death, it must be 
admitted, but throwing a somber pall over the roseate hopes 
of the young and inexperienced — a very Juggernaut, careless 
of the sufferings occasioned by his triumphal progress to any 
' happy-go-lucky anarchistic sort of creature ' 3 too sunk in his 
dreams to mark the progress of the fateful car. 

"You will remember, too, that there was no real privacy; 
no man could feel himself quite alone, and truly his own master. 
Every street was determined in its relation to every other 
street ; every house was on some street or other, and at a fixed 
distance from some other house ; every man had a neighbor 
whom it was impossible wholly to ignore. He who exhibited 
his independence by moving out of his house, and taking up his 
dwelling in a tub, was made a subject of criticism. It was 
pointed out to him that his tub was a poor one — that the hoops 
were loose and the staves let in the sun. 4 Nor could he get 



Playing with the World 231 

rid of his critic by saying that he liked the sun. Some officious 
bystander was sure to remark that a roof which admitted the 
sun would as certainly admit the rain, and he would then insist 
upon an answer to the impertinent question : What does it 
profit, under such circumstances, to take refuge in a tub at all ? 
As if such things were matters of cold calculation when the sky 
is blue and the sun resplendent ! Nor was there even freedom 
of speech in the intolerant city. Can we call it freedom of 
speech when a man is not permitted to use words in a 'large 
loose way ' ? 5 When he must haggle over exact meanings, 
must employ his terms always in the same sense, and must 
offer proof for all his statements ? 6 A poor town, say I : 
a mean town ; a town of prim New England neatness, but 
with none of the breezy largeness of the West. 

"Contrast with the stifling atmosphere of orderly repres- 
sion, from which we made our escape, the generous measure 
of freedom which has since been ours. The very road on which 
we plant our feet we may claim to be our own, although we 
have never before traveled it. In a sense, it is true, it may be 
called a highway traveled by other pilgrims ; but, surely, only 
in a loose sense, for no two need follow precisely the same path, 
nor need any two have before them precisely the same goal. 
The striking fact that guarantees our liberty and allows free 
play to individuality is that the whole universe through which 
our road leads must be regarded as incomplete, 7 as imperfectly 
unified, 8 as loosely connected, 9 as growing in every part, 10 
and as awaiting the additions which we ourselves are about to 
make to it. 11 

"In the pestilent city which we have left, men would not 
admit that they made reality, except in that limited and hum- 
drum sense in which carpenters may be said to make chairs 
and statesmen to make history. When they did not know 
where a given house was, they nevertheless assumed that it 
must be definitely somewhere, and that their knowing or not 



232 The World We Live In 

knowing did not affect its particular street and number, or 
bring it into a more or a less intimate topographical relation 
to the other houses on its block, or to the City Hall. They were 
all inclined to divorce knowledge and reality, and to make it 
the duty of knowledge to accept dictation and to follow humbly 
in the footsteps of what they called evidence. Whereas, in our 
pragmatic world of broader, if more indefinite, horizons, we 
know that knowledge and reality cannot thus be divorced. In 
coming to know, we are affecting the structure of the universe it- 
self ; 12 building out to greater completion an unfinished world, 13 
knitting together what must remain at loose ends until we 
have brought its floating parts into connection. The world 
is not a cheap, ready-made unit, but human efforts are daily 
unifying it more and more. 14 It is imperfectly unified even 
now, after all the labor that we and our predecessors have 
spent upon it, and perhaps it will always remain imperfectly 
unified. 15 Some parts of it may really be very loosely connected 
with other parts. 16 In our cognitive life, as well as in our prac- 
tical, we are creative — we add to reality, both to things and 
to their qualities. 17 

"It is inevitable that our doctrine should be misunderstood 
by those pedants of the schools who revel in abstractions and 
shun the concrete. By men who talk of 'Truth,' and forget 
that only concrete truths exist; 1S who prate of 'Reality,' and 
overlook the fact that no man can come in contact with 
anything real save in the shape of individual realities. 19 To 
appreciate our freedom in contributing to the structure of the 
universe, and to realize as we should our dignity and respon- 
sibility as creators, 20 we must fix our attention upon the con- 
crete instance. Just consider, for example, the South Pole — 
we may assume it to exist, for the belief appears, on the whole, 
to be expedient. 21 Do not suppose that I am dogmatizing and 
insisting that you or any one should believe really and literally 
in the South Pole, which science has added to the common-sense 



Playing with the World 233 

world of our ordinary experience. But let us speak as if 
it existed. 22 

"Now, it must be clear to any thoughtful mind that the 
South Pole is very loosely connected even yet with the Equator. 
Few women, on coming out of their own doors, could tell how 
to turn in order to face it ; very few men could keep a straight 
course, even for a day, in marching towards it ; no one has as 
yet reached it as a sensible terminus that can be verified 
exactly. 23 It remains to some future genius * so to build out this 
incomplete and loosely jointed world that the South Pole may 
really be definitely related to the Equator, and knit to it 
closely — - at least as closely as is the North Pole now, though, 
of course, the different parts of the world will always remain 
incompletely unified. 24 Should we undertake this work of 
unification, which happens to be aside from our present duty, 
you can readily conceive, Faithful, what a dignified task it 
would be, and what a responsibility would rest upon us to put 
the Pole in just the spot in which it would, in the long run, be 
most advantageous to have it. 25 

"The whole conception is an inspiring one — a loose uni- 
verse, adrift in space, with such as we in it creating its truth 
and reality ; 26 a road which we throw out before us as we 
journey ; 27 and yonder shining light, which we cast freely before 
ourselves, and which cannot, hence, compel us, in following it, 
to stumble along stony paths and to wade through doleful 
morasses. 28 A completely genial universe, that relieves the 
tedium of the wayfarer by the exhibition of unaccountable 
novelties, delightful surprises, for which no past experience can 
wholly prepare a man. 29 A universe, too, in which no truth 
that too seriously shocks our prejudices, too roughly jolts our 
susceptibilities, can get itself established as truth. 30 A universe 

* Christian is a little behind the times. It is interesting to note that the 
modest genius who did the world the service in question announced the com- 
pletion of his task in the words, "We discovered the Pole." 



234 The World We Live In 

in which all truths are either immediately or in the long run 
expedient, and are true just in proportion to their expediency. 31 
We are, indeed, in a fair world and on a goodly road, and we 
cannot too much congratulate ourselves upon our escape from 
that dreadful town of red-tape and regularity. 

"And what houses of refreshment seem to be provided for 
pilgrims like ourselves ! Think of the homelike informality 
of the hotel in which we lodged last night. The generous for- 
eigner, Papini, who presides over it, has no rules to torment his 
guests. His door is always open, and his corridor is as free as 
the public street. What is done in the several rooms of the 
house he does not regard as his concern. You will remember 
that we found in one of its innumerable chambers a man writ- 
ing an atheistic volume ; in the next, some one was on his 
knees praying for faith and strength ; in a third a chemist 
investigated a body's properties. In a fourth, a system of 
idealistic metaphysics was being excogitated, and in a fifth the 
impossibility of metaphysics was being shown. And all of 
the remarkable men thus occupied circulated freely in the prag- 
matic corridor, and could not carry on their diverse occupa- 
tions without it. 32 

"The significance of the various activities which employed 
Signor Papini's guests becomes luminous only to one who has 
learned how iniquitous is the divorce between knowledge and 
reality accepted as a matter of course by the inhabitants of 
Everybody's World. Having risen to the conception that man 
is creative even in his cognitive capacity, and that reality is 
incomplete, and is growing, as a result of human efforts, we can 
see that the atheist was disintegrating God, while the man on 
his knees was building Him up again ; that the idealist was 
turning the world into ideas, while the scoffer at meta- 
physics was lending to it a heavy opacity which helped it to 
resist transformation ; that the chemist was creating the body 
which he was investigating and was clothing it with attributes 



Playing with the World 235 

of his own manufacture. 33 Each man, in the measure of his 
abilities, was modifying the structure of the universe, 34 and 
was making truth, 35 much as we are making the road on which 
we now walk together. And they lived in harmony, for none 
gave serious attention to the results obtained by any other, 
all having agreed together to have no prejudices whatever, no 
obstructive dogmas, and no rigid canons of what should count 
as proof.™ 

"By the way, Faithful, did you remark the absence of the 
commercial traveler? That incorrigible Philistine, who in- 
sists upon having his meals cooked in traditional ways, and 
served at regular hours, who coldly calculates his business 
chances in the future with an eye shamelessly turned upon his 
experiences of the past, who nervously studies time-tables, and 
is irritated at the suggestion that they are mere approximations 
to truth and are not intended really to indicate with exactitude 
the time at which trains may be expected to arrive and leave, 37 
who is full of prejudices, objecting to the detonations of the 
chemist in the room to the right and to the audible prayers of 
the man on his knees in the room to the left, nourishing a sus- 
picion of the atheist, and growing restive under the periods of 
the idealistic metaphysician — such as he avoid the place, and 
they refuse to set a foot within the corridor. So much the 
better for the genial, easy-going comfort of the hotel ! High- 
class hotels are not meant for anybody and Everybody. They 
are lounging places for men of leisure who can afford to give 
themselves a holiday. 38 

"But, help ! where are we ? In talking I have forgotten to 
watch my steps. Can it be that we have strayed from the 
right path ? This ground is soft ; I am sinking ; and so, I 
perceive, are you. Let me have your hand, and let us make for 
that rising slope opposite. Be quick, Faithful, be quick !" 

"Christian," said Faithful, "you surprise me. How can 
we be on the wrong road ? Have we not made our road the 



236 The World We Live In 

right one as we went along, creating truth and reality with 
every mile that we put behind us? Have we not steadily 
believed that we were on the right road ? To me it is a shock 
to think that we are standing in a bog. I cannot adjust this 
to my previous stock of truths ; it jolts me grievously to admit 
this new truth to be a truth at all ; hence, I simply refuse to 
admit it." 

''Faithful, there is no time now to discuss the matter. Be- 
lieve what you please, but help me. Later we can beat the 
whole subject out at our leisure. Do give me your hand. So, 
I begin to breathe again. That was a close shave for us pil- 
grims ! We must not forget ourselves again as we talk. We 
really must watch our steps a little. Another such slip, 
and we are done." 

"But, Christian, I am amazed. One would think we were 
still in Everybody's World. You appear to be transformed. 
How can you reconcile what you have been saying about the 
freedom of our pragmatic universe and the making of truth 
and reality with the panic you have just been in, with your 
recognition of brute fact, surely as brute a fact as any to be 
met with in the City of Destruction ? Do you mean to main- 
tain that our road is already there ? that we must find it, not 
make it ? that we must study charts, and admit that we are 
encompassed with dangers ? Is it for this that we have braved 
the unknown and have unchained our creative energy ? If we 
really can create both subjects and predicates, why may we not 
dry a bog so that it could pass for a patch on the Libyan 
desert?" 

"Faithful," said Christian, "do you not remember my 
saying at the outset of our conversation that our old neighbors 
misunderstood us, and accused us of shutting our eyes to the 
realities which every man of sense must admit ? Far enough 
is far enough, say I, and too much is too much. Freedom we 
must have. To secure that we set out on our journey. But 



Playing with the World 237 

freedom must not be allowed to degenerate into unbridled li- 
cense. The Pragmatist cannot create things out of nothing — 
he can only add to reality. You are young and impetuous; 
learn to temper your zeal with caution. So far, I have dwelt 
upon the positive side of our doctrine only. I see it is time to 
point out the limitations to man's power which, even in our 
freer pragmatic universe, must be recognized by a man of 
sense. 

"Now, it is quite true that truth makes itself, with our 
assistance, as we go ; 39 that, if we say : ' this is true because it 
is useful' or 'this is useful because it is true,' it is all one ; 40 
that we call a new theory true when it marries new facts with old 
opinions in a way to jar us the least, and, hence, proves itself 
most satisfactory to us as individuals with this or that settled 
habit of thought ; 41 but this is only half the truth. No pilgrim 
would dare to take the least excursion beyond the patrolled 
and lamplit streets of Everybody's World were he assured 
that the Beyond which calls him were really a realm of utter 
lawlessness, in which neither men nor things can be counted 
upon at all, and where neither prudence nor prevision have 
any significance. It is, in fact, a realm in which the pilgrim 
must orient himself with circumspection, and must go about 
the making of truth in a sensible way. 

"He must recognize, to begin with, that there is such a thing 
as a flux of sensations — that such are forced upon him, com- 
ing he knows not whence. Over their nature, their order, their 
quantity, he has little control. 42 Sensation's irremediable 
flow 43 is not a thing to trifle with, as we had occasion to realize, 
when we found ourselves bemired a few moments since. It is 
as important to remark that there is a second part of reality of 
which our beliefs must obediently take account. This is the 
relations that obtain between our sensations, or between their 
copies in our minds. 44 One's beliefs must not play fast and 
loose with the order which realities follow in his experience. 45 



238 The World We Live In 

Finally, there is the whole body of previously accepted truths, 
which furnish a basis on which every man must stand who will 
seek new truth. 46 

"Truths are not arbitrary beliefs, taken up recklessly and 
held with unreasoning obstinacy. They are something to 
be verified and validated. Our minds are wedged tightly be- 
tween coercions of the sensible order and of the ideal order. 
To be true, our ideas must agree with realities, whether sensible 
or abstract, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frus- 
tration, 47 that is, under penalty of being proved false. And 
although we Pragmatists interpret the word 'agreement' in a 
large, loose way, 48 we by no means rob it of all significance. 
Temporary and partial agreements will not serve our turn. 
To be really true an idea must adapt our life to the reality's 
whole setting. 49 You see, thus, that although the true is the 
useful, is what works, is the expedient, we escape the calumnies 
of those who would render us ridiculous, by insisting that we 
here mean by expedient what is expedient on the whole, and in 
the long run. 50 How long the run must be it is manifestly im- 
possible to say. Who can prove that it serves man's expediency, 
or that of any other creature, that a crater on the moon 
should have a diameter of two hundred and two miles rather 
than of two hundred and fifty? or, for that matter, that 
that particular crater should be there at all? But here, as 
elsewhere, one must have faith, and must fall back, in the 
meantime, on other sorts of agreement. 

"Hence, I reject your reasons for refusing to admit the bog. 
I felt the brute fact of sensation's irremediable flow as far 
up as the knees. I was compelled to submit to the coercions 
of the world of sense. As to the shock you experienced in 
finding us where we were in spite of previous beliefs, I beg 
you to observe that a new truth, to justify its existence as 
such, must not merely derange previous beliefs as little as 
possible, but must lead, to some sensible terminus or other that can 



Playing with the World 239 

be exactly verified} 1 We stood unmistakably in the sensible 
terminus ; the verification was perception} 2 Your sense of 
shock unquestionably presented the weaker claim. 

"Be reasonable. Avoid giving a color of justice to the 
slanderous tongues of the unenlightened. 53 Pragmatism does 
not stand for irresponsible nonsense. 'Pent in, as the Prag- 
matist more than any one else sees himself to be, between 
the whole body of funded truths squeezed from the past and 
the coercions of the world of sense about him, who so well as 
he feels the immense pressure of objective control under 
which our minds perform their operations ? ' 54 

"Nevertheless, the Pragmatist may still rejoice in regarding 
himself as a maker of truth and reality. He enjoys a sober 
freedom. Is he not free to take the number 27 as the cube of 3, 
or as the product of 3 and 9, or as 26 plus 1 ? Can he not 
regard a chessboard as white squares on a black ground, or 
black squares on a white ground ? Is not each conception a 
true one ? Even in dealing with what is so remote and seem- 
ingly independent of us as the heavenly bodies, can he not call 
the same constellation Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, or the 
Dipper? None of these names will be false, for all will be 
applicable. 55 Thus, although it remains a stubborn fact 
that there is a sensible flux, it is also true that what is true 
of it seems from first to last to be largely a matter of our 
creation. 56 The affair of the bog I here pass over ; under 
the circumstances, we could do little with that." 

"Christian," said Faithful, "the concessions you now make 
to the prejudices of Everybody's World seem to me to curtail 
our freedom to an extent which renders doubtful the wisdom 
of our leaving the City of Destruction at all. Even in that 
unendurable place men enjoyed what they called freedom. 
They made changes in their universe by carrying chairs out 
of one room into another, and they arranged them as they 
pleased. They felt free to say one dollar, or to say one 



240 The World We Live In 

hundred cents, quite indifferently. When you asked your 
way, one man said 'Turn to the right' and another said 
'Turn to the left,' according to the position in which it had 
pleased each to place his body. Nor did they quarrel when 
one maintained that an umbrella was shorter than a man, and 
his neighbor insisted that a man was longer than an umbrella. 
But they all agreed that moving chairs about never created a 
new chair; that counting in cents did not fatten the purse; 
that varying one's form of expression in pointing out the loca- 
tion of a house did not transport the house from one street to 
another ; that men and umbrellas have definite lengths which 
may be measured in feet and inches, and which do not vary 
with our point of view. They kept one eye anxiously fixed 
on reality, whatever they did with the other, and they picked 
their steps in the world as though they were always under dicta- 
tion. Knowledge they valued ; and they admitted, in a gen- 
eral way, its expediency, for they were always pointing out to 
us that a man could not find his way home if he did not know 
his street and number. But they made of knowledge a thing 
to be gained laboriously, and under the rod of the schoolmaster. 
A real freedom in knowing and in dealing with things they did 
not enjoy. Do you remember the man who was unable to fit 
a large cork into the neck of a small bottle, and the contempt 
with which he received our helpful suggestion that he try 
regarding the diameter of the orifice as 3 quarters of an inch 
and that of the cork as only 2 half inches ? You give up too 
much; and, I may add, you detract from the dignity of 
such creators as are lodged in Signor Papini's hotel. To hear 
you, one would think they were doing just what Everybody 
does, which is something very commonplace, and not properly 
to be called ' creation ' at all. 

" For my part, I still refuse to accept that swamp. And I go 
farther than you in the matter of the flux and of our additions 
to it. We and men like us make practically the whole world 



Playing with the World 241 

in which we find ourselves — the negligible residue may be 
left out of our philosophy. By the way, what is that I see in 
the distance ? It appears to move." 

"It looks to me," said Christian, "like a lion. Sensations, 
the relations between them, and the body of funded truths 
which constitute what is called common knowledge conspire 
to convince me that it is a lion, and that we have escaped 
from one peril only to meet a worse. It is certainly approach- 
ing, and our way of escape is cut off. We are lost men ! " 

"Now, Christian," said Faithful, "trust to me. Your mild 
form of Pragmatism is all very well for ordinary occasions, 
but, in such an emergency as this, one needs to be a Pragma- 
tist in the Second Degree, that is, a Humanist. Observe how, 
under my 'intelligent manipulations,' that lion, seemingly so 
'intractable,' will 'grow plastic,' and become as harmless as a 
tawny dream. 57 

"I will begin with the flux of sensations. Are not color, 
shape, and size something perceived by the senses ? and are not 
the senses human — organs relative to our needs ? It seems 
to follow of itself that the objectivity of our perceptions is en- 
tirely practical and useful and teleological. Our perceptions 
have come to exist in order that we may live with our fellow- 
men. 58 Does this not in itself suggest that they cannot indi- 
cate that we are to be killed by a lion ? 

"Indeed, the flux of sensations, when critically examined, 
turns out to be, until we have tampered with it, something so 
nearly nothing that it scarcely merits attention at all. We 
must accept a basis of initial fact, to be sure, 59 but we must dis- 
tinguish between apparent fact and real. 60 The original fact 
is not made, but found, and in so far is independent, I grant 
you ; but, then, as, in its raw state, it is most unsatisfactory, 
we set to work to unmake it and remake it. 61 As originally 
given it cannot be taken as ' real fact ' or as ' true reality,' for it 
is really a meaningless chaos. 62 By a process of selection and 



242 The World We Live In 

valuation we turn this stuff into 'fact' in the stricter sense; 
and in this making of ' real reality ' our interests, desires, 
and emotions play a leading part. 63 

"Mark, Christian, that without a process of selection by us, 
there are no real facts for us ; and this process of selection is 
immensely arbitrary. 64 I know very well that the vulgar say 
that reality must be discovered, not made ; but pragmatically 
this only means that in certain cases its behavior is such that 
it is practically inconvenient or impossible to ascribe its reality 
for us entirely to our own subjective activity. 65 The whole 
matter possesses for the Pragmatist little interest ; initial facts 
or truths are of small importance, and the question about the 
nature of initial truth and reality cannot be allowed to weigh 
upon our spirits. 66 'Methodologically,' as the philosophers 
say, independent fact can be disregarded; we must conceive 
every truth and every reality now recognized as evolved from 
the cognitive process in which we now observe it. 67 Thus, 
this alien world, which appears to coerce us, grows plastic to 
our intelligent manipulations. 68 We must assume, as a work- 
ing principle, that the plasticity of fact is adequate for every pur- 
pose. 69 

"It only remains to apply these truths to the concrete in- 
stance — to the approaching lion. It is evident that the part 
of him which we do not freely make, the irreducible fact, 
although independent of us, is as good as nothing. It is a 
little corner of chaos which we should cheerfully accept. 
Indeed, it plays directly into the hand of the Pragmatist, for 
it gives him something to transform. 70 Who can distinguish 
between the unreal, irreducible, chaotic shred of 'fact' which 
men, animated by their desires and needs, work up into a lion, 
and that which they, also for their own ends, work up into a 
sheep ? Hence the lion is just what we make it, and it cannot 
even be intelligently discussed apart from the interests, pur- 
poses, desires, emotions, ends, goods, postulations, and choices 



Playing with the World 243 

of man. 71 Do you not begin to see the light ? Are you not 
somewhat reassured already ? " 

"Not yet, Faithful, for the creature roars uncommonly like 
a lion. I do not seem able to subject it to the intelligent manip- 
ulations which should make it bleat. Nor can I feel that its 
threatening aspect is adjusted to my interests, purposes, de- 
sires, and emotions. Make haste, or it will be upon us before 
you have drawn its fangs." 

"Have no fear," rejoined Faithful, "I have but begun. 
Even though some 'facts' do not look as though they would 
speedily yield to human treatment, that is no reason for 
abandoning our methodological principle of complete plas- 
ticity. 72 Mark this : no lion is dangerous unless it is a real 
lion, unless it is really true that it is a Hon. Now, the con- 
sideration of the nature of truth opens up for us the most hope- 
ful perspectives. 

"Truth is peculiar to man. 73 It must have a bearing on 
some human interest. 74 If an assertion is true, its consequences 
must be good. 75 Sciences are human constructs, and the 
truth or falsity of a statement depends upon its relevance to the 
question raised in a particular science. 76 Statements are true, 
that is, good, when they conduce to the purpose of the science ; 
they are false, or bad, when they thwart it. 77 And a science is 
good when it harmonizes our life. 78 Hence, we may say, speak- 
ing generally, that the true must be the good, the useful, and 
the practical. 79 In the present instance, we are not concerned 
precisely with a science, but the principle is the same. The 
predication of truth is dependent on relevance to a proximate 
rather than to an ultimate scientific purpose. The ordinary 
truths we predicate have but little concern with ultimate ends 
and realities. They are true (at least, pro tern.) if they serve 
their immediate purpose. 80 Do not forget that truth and its 
consequences are for man, 81 and that the consequences of a 
true assertion must be good. 82 I beg to ask you, what earthly 



244 The World We Live In 

good could it do to us or to anybody that we shall be devoured 
by a lion of our own creation, incapable of coming into exist- 
ence without effort and agency on our part ? 83 How would 
that minister to the needs of human life ? 84 It would in the 
highest degree baffle and thwart us. 85 Ergo, that is not a 
lion, but is a sheep. Do you feel better now ? " 

"Not a bit," moaned Christian, "if I really have made that 
lion, I seem quite unable to unmake and remake him. He 
is getting dangerously near. Can you not do something ? and 
at once?" 

"Surely I can, Christian. Listen once more. Know 
that truths can only come into being by 'winning our accept- 
ance.' 86 Neither a lion nor a sheep can exist except as a 
result of our own processes of selection and valuation. This 
you have seen. And you have yourself dwelt upon man's 
freedom in attending to this or that element in what you call 
the sensible flux, pointing out the significance of this for 
human interests. 87 But you have not sufficiently emphasized 
the truth that ' facts ' which do not interest us, ' facts ' that we 
cannot use, tend to drop into unreality. 'Our neglect really 
tends to make them unreal.' 88 Let us try this selective inat- 
tention upon the lion. Turn your attention resolutely to some- 
thing else. See how the yellow light of the sun loses itself in 
the shadows of yonder wood. Hear the liquid notes which 
issue from the leafy depths, where the birds have taken refuge 
from the sultry heat. The world is a fair world and a joyous. 
Are you following me?" 

"Faithful, this is too much to expect of a mere man. That 
ominous roar fills the air. And as to the protective value of 
selective inattention, can you not call to mind the bones on 
which we chanced three days since, and which, as we were told, 
were left on the field by an unlucky wight who had the mis- 
fortune to be deaf, and who paid no attention at all to the beast 
of prey that sprang upon him from behind? That lion we 






Playing with the World 245 

see is a fact, an unpleasant fact, a dreadful reality. Have you 
no place at all for unpleasant facts in your philosophy ? have 
you no means of dealing with them ? " 

"Why, yes, Christian, I am not an extremist, and I do recog- 
nize unpleasant facts. However, I am thankful to say that I 
have several ways of diminishing, if not of annihilating, their 
unpleasantness. To begin with, the true Pragmatist objects 
to the use of the word 'coerce' which you permitted yourself 
to employ a little while ago. He does not admit the coercions of 
objective fact; he prefers to conceive the objective as that 
which he aims at, accepts, and remakes. Coercions are always 
mitigated by acceptance. 89 When Kate submitted freely to 
the commands laid upon her by Petruchio, she was no longer 
a slave. She did what she would, because she would do 
what she had to do. Again, the Pragmatist may always regard 
an unpleasant fact as 'the less unpleasant alternative.' 90 
There is sure to be something conceivably worse, in compari- 
son with which the unpleasant fact becomes relatively agree- 
able. Finally, the Pragmatist may accept the unpleasant fact 
provisionally, with the intention of reducing it to unreality 
after a while. This entails no serious consequences. It only 
means a willingness to accept the fact for the time being. 91 
You see, I take up a moderate position, and yet I bring com- 
fort." 

"Not to me," said Christian, "not to me. In the first place, 
I object to being freely coerced into the maw of that raging 
beast. In the second place, I can think of no alternative open 
to me more objectionable than being devoured. And in the 
third place, I ask you, as a sensible man, how I can be expected, 
an hour hence, to reduce to unreality the lion and the fact that 
I have been eaten? You seem to speak without reflection, 
Faithful. I find your words as little comforting as they are 
convincing. We may as well make up our minds that we are 
lost men ! But, hold, what is that I see ? as I live, it is Heed- 



246 The World We Live In 

less stumbling through the hedge right into the path of the 
lion. He will certainly lose his life, but we can get away. 
To think that we should be saved at such a sacrifice ! Poor 
Heedless ! Poor Heedless ! . . . " 

"Christian," said Faithful, when they had regained their 
breath after their headlong flight, "I am not sure that Heed- 
less is so much to be pitied as your last exclamations would 
suggest. I, too, have been feeling for him a painful sympathy ; 
but I am now convinced that this is an unreasoning weakness 
that I should unmake and remake. It is not true that Heed- 
less lost his life, and I can prove it. Have you not yourself 
asserted that 'facts,' as such, are not true; that they simply 
are? 92 We have seen that all truths are human truths and 
can come into being only by winning our acceptance. 93 The 
true means what is valued by us, and, hence, a new truth be- 
comes true only when it is discovered. 94 Now, follow my argu- 
ment. We do not know that Heedless has been devoured. 
We have not discovered it. He himself could not possibly have 
verified the fact ; for while he was alive he was not yet killed, 
and, when he was killed, he was not in a position to verify 
anything. I do not see, hence, how the truth that he was de- 
voured could possibly have gotten itself verified by this time. 
Who was there to accept it? As to the chances of other 
pilgrims wandering into that infested swamp and collecting 
evidence that can make it true that Heedless died, that is too 
remote a contingency to plague us. It is, then, not true that 
he did die ; perhaps it never will become true. It is not rea- 
sonable to allow mere fact, as such, to weigh upon our spirits, 95 
and I, for one, refuse to antedate my sympathy. 

"But enough of a disagreeable subject. Let us look forward 
with cheerfulness, and dismiss the past from our minds. 
Pragmatism 'is not a retrospective theory. Its significance 
does not lie in its explanation of the past so much as in its 
present attitude towards the future. And so, like life, and as 



Playing with the World 247 

befits a theory of human life, Pragmatism faces towards the 
future.' 96 Had Gil Bias been a Pragmatist, he would never 
have allowed it to weigh upon his spirits that no patient who 
fell into the hands of himself or of his master, Dr. Sangrado, 
ever escaped with his life. He would have faced the future 
with confidence, and would not have abandoned the practice 
of the medical profession. Pragmatism is a doctrine of -prom- 
ise. Let us forget those things which are behind — the bones 
upon which we happened, the bog, the lion, poor Heedless — 
and let us press on to the creation of new truth and reality 
adjusted to the interests, purposes, desires, emotions, ends, 
goods, postulations, and choices of man. Forward, Christian, 
we must be up and doing." 

With this, Christian and Faithful passed on over the hill 
and out of my dream. But not out of my thoughts; for 
their conversation impressed me deeply with the gross injus- 
tice that men have done them, both those open enemies who 
have attacked them with acrimony and those injudicious 
friends who have encouraged them to submit their utterances 
to tests of a nature which they are little fitted to endure. 

Pragmatism as prophecy, as the encouraging cry of a warm 
heart to fellow beings in distress, as an admonition to hope, 
so long as hope is in any way possible, and not to give one's self 
up weakly to despair — this is worthy of all praise. The 
prophet is not concerned to describe accurately what lies 
before his bodily eyes. His "Thus saith the Lord ! " gains no 
advantage from footnotes and from the adduction of authori- 
ties. The inner vision of the moral enthusiast triumphs over 
the banal and often distressing details of palpable fact. The 
ideal overlays the real, and it conceals from view what the 
passionate heart of the poet would gladly ignore. 

To be sure, even the prophet must live, and to live at all must 
pick his steps with some attention as he wanders through the 
wilderness of this world. But he does this as a man — as a 



248 The World We Live In 

prophet he must not be too hesitating and circumspect. 
Prophecy has an honored place in the world we live in. But 
prophecy should not be unequally yoked with logical theory 
and compelled to drag the plow like any beast of burden. So 
treated, it has been reduced to base uses, which it can but in- 
differently serve, strain every nerve as it will. 

Nor should the generous willingness of the prophet to submit 
himself to the harness induce us to take advantage of him. 
Both Christian and Faithful have, it is true, presented them- 
selves as logical theorists. Every man may be excused for 
only partially understanding his own nature and the purposes 
which he is best fitted to serve. Nevertheless, if we, too, are 
generous, we will not omit to note that they have been un- 
mistakably guarded in their utterances. 

A logician who calls himself a happy-go-lucky anarchistic 
sort of creature, and who expresses himself as indifferent to the 
fact that the staves of his syllogisms do not hold together, has 
almost told us in so many words that he claims no kinship with 
Aristotle. He who informs us that the human reason, ever 
gloriously human, "mercifully interposes an impenetrable veil 
between us and any truth or reality which is wholly alien to our 
nature," 97 has expressly reserved the right either to omit 
premises or to reject the logical precipitate we call a conclusion. 
Aristotle and such as he are not dithyrambic. 98 They dance a 
solemn dance and a tiresome, and their music is monotonous. 

It is to bring out the fact that the Pragmatists, the real 
Pragma tists, should not be treated as logical theorists, and should 
not be held accountable for every idle word, that the above 
conversation between Christian and Faithful has been reported. 
The fact seems to have been overlooked, very much, I think, to 
the detriment of Pragmatism, in a great part of the extensive 
literature which has made its appearance within the last few 
years, and through which those of us who read philosophy have 
felt it our duty conscientiously to wade. In the dense jungle 



Playing with the World 249 

of articles, enthusiastic, denunciatory, expository, critical, 
controversial, conciliatory, and apologetic, which has sprung 
up overnight, a sense of humor is conspicuously lacking. That 
is treated as seriously intended for science which had its origin 
in a temperamental revolt against the bloodless reasonableness 
of science. Various shades of Pragmatism have been dis- 
tinguished from one another with laborious minuteness. It has 
become possible for the Pragmatist to say : "We are Thirteen," 
as Wordsworth's wise child, overlooking reservations and dis- 
tinctions, found it practicable to say, "We are Seven." 

The very generosity and kindly tolerant spirit of the Prag- 
matist have filled up his camp with men in uniforms of all cuts 
and all colors ; with men, in some cases, indeed, equipped with 
little save a cartridge belt or a pair of spurs. Those in full 
regimentals have not turned upon them the cold shoulder, pro- 
vided only they showed themselves animated with a decent 
resentment against the "intellectualist." 

Perhaps it will be said : Why, if there may be various sorts 
of realists and of idealists, may there not also be various 
sorts of Pragmatists, wise and otherwise, good and bad ? To 
this I am bound to answer, I know of no reason. But some dis- 
tinctions are of minor importance, and it does not seem worth 
while to dwell upon them unduly. Others are fundamental. 
Thus, I should regard it as of the utmost importance to dis- 
tinguish the logical theorist, as such, from the whole body of 
those who exercise the functions of the prophet. If the latter 
have preempted the name, Pragmatist, the former, in adopting 
it, seems compelled to take some risk of being misconceived. 
The legal right to assume a title cannot, of course, be disputed. 
Things have come to a sorry pass in the United States if a man 
is not as free to call himself " Pragmatist " as to call himself 
"Colonel." We all know that the assumption of the latter 
designation does not compel one to adopt the profession of 
arms, or even to exhibit a bellicose disposition. Between colo- 



250 The World We Live In 

nels military and colonels titular there is, however, an impor- 
tant difference. There appears little excuse for confusing them. 
So it is with Pragmatisms. 

Nevertheless, a man of a reflective turn of mind will be im- 
pelled to ask himself in all seriousness how it is that Pragmatism 
as prophecy and Pragmatism as logical theory show a certain 
tendency to pass into one another, a tendency evident even in 
the case of the real Pragmatists, Christian, Faithful, and those 
who stand nearest to them. The explanation of this tendency 
concerns very nearly the doctrine set forth in this book, and 
justifies the insertion of a chapter on Pragmatism. For the 
Pragmatist is a man who has realized, as, indeed, a man should 
realize, that the world we live in is the World as Phenomenon, 
and is not presented to us at all except as it is presented to 
our senses and known by our intellect. It is a human world, 
our world, not the world of some other creature differently con- 
stituted. In Chapter VIII, I have dwelt upon the significance 
of this thought, and have tried to show that the recognition of 
the truth in no way compels us to confuse psychology and phys- 
ics, the subjective and the objective, knowledge and the reality 
known. It is a truth of which both common thought and science 
have taken account instinctively all along, and have thus been 
saved from playing fast and loose with reality and from making 
shipwreck hopelessly on the rock of pure incoherence. 

Now, it is rather easy to slip from the notion that the world 
is our world in one sense to the belief that it is our world in 
another. We are accustomed to think that a man may do what 
he will with his own. Can we call the world our own so long 
as we are compelled to remain in bondage to the rules of the 
inductive and deductive logic recognized implicitly or explicitly 
by common thought and by science ? So long as we must walk 
slowly and laboriously over uncertain ground, seeking with one 
foot for a bit of firm sod before we can draw the other from the 
mud into which it has sunk ? That the world is to some degree 



Playing with the World 251 

our own to unmake and remake as we please, even common 
sense admits. And when it breaks in upon our minds that the 
World is Phenomenon, our Phenomenon, what more natural 
than that it should occur to us to claim a larger right ? This 
larger right the Pragmatist as prophet passes over to tn<_ 
Pragmatist as logician. The procedure is entirely natural, 
and testifies to the generosity of his impulses. That the 
Pragmatist as logician should receive the gift is not as creditable 
to his caution. 

If there is any sort of Pragmatism as logical theory which 
wholly avoids falling into this natural error; if there is any 
which recognizes that the mechanism of our knowing, the 
volitional character of our mental life, our reasons for wishing 
to know or to know this rather than that, the utility of knowl- 
edge, the disadvantages of ignorance, and so forth, are matters 
which, while undoubtedly of significance for certain sciences, 
can wholly be abstracted from when we are concerned with other 
matters, such as the date of Caesar's birth, the distances of the 
stars, the size of the cork which will fit a given bottle, the 
question whether two witnesses observed the assault alleged 
to have been made on the plaintiff on Wednesday — if, I say, 
there is any form of Pragmatism as logical theory which can 
and does distinguish thus clearly between objective fact and our 
knowledge of it, how we come to know it, and how we like or 
dislike it when known, then there is nothing in this chapter that 
can be construed as a criticism of that particular sort of 
Pragmatism. It may retain the name, for me. To its emphasis 
upon the truths that the World is Phenomenon, that all crea- 
tures do not experience the same phenomena, and that our 
mental life is pervasively volitional, I make not the least objec- 
tion. 

But a Pragmatism that finds it difficult to walk thus soberly, 
and prefers to claim a larger freedom — the freedom of such hos- 
telries as Signor Papini's hotel — must, I think, be accused, if, 



252 The World We Live hi 

indeed, we take it as logical theory and think it worth while 
to bring a formal accusation against it, of playing with the 
world, of treating with levity the body of knowledge that the 
long travail of the ages, not yet accomplished, has laboriously 
bought together for the enlightenment of mankind. It does 
injustice to Everybody's World, and that is an offense com- 
mitted against Everybody. As I have said, however, I con- 
sider it a wrong to bring Pragmatism into court in this way at 
all. The spectacle of an officer of the law coercing a prophet 
must be distasteful to every man of feeling. The true prophet 
is a useful creature, and worthy of no little respect. He should 
be allowed to go on his way unmolested. I shall come back to 
him in the last chapter of this book. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE WORLD OP SOBER EARNEST 

He who has traveled far and has seen much should surely 
not come home quite empty handed. The voyages we have 
made in the realms of the philosophers have, I hope, brought 
us back rich in experience, if in nothing else, lighter by the 
loss of some prejudices, more willing to look with appreciative 
eyes upon the old home in which dwell most of our friends and 
acquaintances, solid men who, whether they travel or not, 
appear to make a good deal of their lives and to be by no means 
void of discretion. Are we in a position to tell them things 
that they did not know before ? Can we point out to them 
excellencies or defects in the constitution of their state, to which 
they have remained blind or of which they have been only 
half conscious ? Certainly many of them look to us for such 
information. Some of them expect of us more than we are, 
I fear, in a position to impart. 

But we can certainly do something. Let us see what we 
can do. First of all, we can banish from the light of day that 
threatening but bodiless specter, the universal skepticism which, 
standing upon no ground itself, tries to cut away the ground 
beneath the feet of established knowledge. He who would get 
anywhere and do anything at all, must be somewhere or other 
to begin with. The universal skeptic is nowhere — neither on 
land, on the water, or in the air. We need not fear him, for 
there is nothing against which he can push or pull. To be sure, 
his visits are more apt to plague the philosopher in his cell 
than the busy citizen of Everybody's World, who works by 
day and sleeps by night. He is an ethereal creature, and the 
253 



254 The World We Live In 

unwholesome phosphorescent light by which he faintly shines 
is rendered well-nigh invisible by the rising of the sun. Still, 
he pays an occasional visit even to men of robust nature and 
with blood in their veins. He suggests to them the unnatural 
suspicion that the whole body of human knowledge rests upon 
an insecure foundation. Usually he does this by calling atten- 
tion to the fact that certain bits of human knowledge, or what 
have passed as such, appear to the critical eye far from satis- 
factory. He is careful not to draw attention to the fact that 
no statement can be shown to be unsatisfactory save by an 
appeal to other statements, which, if his general contention is 
correct, never ought to be appealed to at all. I may remark, 
in passing, that the best friend of the universal skeptic is the 
thoroughgoing mystic, who delights in rendering absurd definite 
and systematic knowledge in order that he may hoist upon the 
pedestal from which he has dethroned it some reality too 
simple to formulate and too abstract to have any real signifi- 
cance. The step from the belief in the indescribable, which 
can only be made the subject of discussion at all by mention- 
ing all the things it is not, to the belief in nothing at all, is a 
short one, and seems to consist chiefly in the dismissal of an 
emotion. 1 

In the second place, I hope we are in a position to make clear 
that man is not condemned to pass his life fingering second- 
hand knowledge, gazing upon the copies of things dogmati- 
cally assumed to be copies, and confessing with futile regrets 
that he does not know whether the copies are anything like 
the things and cannot even present any reasonable evidence 
that there is a real world of things at all. In Chapter II, I 
have shown how this superstition took its rise. It is entirely 
natural that it should have taken its rise, and not surprising 
that men should tenaciously cling to it in theory, while disre- 
garding it in practice. But it is the duty of a clear-minded 
man to emancipate himself from it. He should resolutely 



The World of Sober Earnest 255 

strike from his chart those Isles of the Blessed, spoken of with 
bated breath as the shrines of the Great Unknowable, but to 
which, as it is admitted, no conceivable route can lead. If we 
know things at all, we know them directly, and we know them 
just as they are under the particular conditions under which 
they are known. The relativity of human knowledge is not a 
thing to play with. Both things and the conditions under 
which they are known are open to investigation. Science is 
not rendered impossible by the truth that both things and 
conditions change. This has been so abundantly proved by the 
actual progress of science that it seems scarcely worth while 
to discuss the matter. And it is absolutely taken for granted 
in everyday life, where conditions and the change in conditions 
are allowed for with much practical good sense, and where 
the relativity of knowledge, tacitly accepted, is not found 
to stand in the way of the only truths men care to establish. 

We are, then, not put off with "mere appearances," though 
it is with appearances that we have to do. The world in which 
we find ourselves is a Cosmos, an orderly system. We are 
at the very heart of things, or as much so as it is conceivable 
that we should be. But just so long as we give ourselves up 
to the baseless superstition that we are fed upon echoes and 
shadows, we will view with suspicion the best that man can do, 
and will long for a better country in which man has only to 
open his mouth that he may grow fat upon Absolute Knowl- 
edge without taking the risks of those who for themselves 
pluck the fruit of the tree. 

In the third place, we may utter a note of solemn warning 
against those who believe that they possess some magic for- 
mula which may transform the world before our eyes. The 
alchemist is out of date. He has made way for the plausi- 
ble stranger with the gold brick, whom experience justifies 
us in suspecting. Among those who have believed that they 
possessed some secret which could transmute the choir of heaven 



256 The World We Live In 

and the furniture of the earth into ideas, and set the whole 
world to revolving respectfully around man, have been the 
choicest and noblest spirits of the race, high-minded men, the 
singleness of whose aim and the acuteness of whose intelli- 
gence we lesser men will do well always to revere. But we 
may love them while refusing to follow them. They may 
stand to us as a melancholy proof that it is possible to discover 
a truth, a great truth, the truth that the only world given at 
all is given in experience, and yet to be so carried away by the 
greatness of this truth as to make of it a fruitful source of error, 
in spite of the unmistakable protest of common sense and of 
science. We do not change the constitution of the world by 
calling it idea or will. 

The philosopher would not be so interesting a creature as 
he is were he completely dehumanized. Those of us who have 
watched the intellectual and emotional currents which have 
stirred our country during the last thirty years have noticed 
how rich a harvest has been gathered by such movements as 
spiritism, theosophy, and Christian Science. They have not 
appealed primarily to philosophers ; but, on the other hand, 
they have not appealed to those who care chiefly for their three 
meals and for their station in society. They have appealed 
to those who have a weakness for short cuts to a knowledge 
of great subjects, who are not devoid of imagination, and who 
welcome a strong stirring of the emotions ; in some cases, be- 
cause they find this last decidedly helpful in getting through 
life. It would be strange, indeed, if we found no tendency 
at all analogical to this in the field of philosophy. 

As a matter of fact, we do find such a tendency. The philos- 
opher who promises us the moon and the stars attracts our 
attention. He interests us, and we hurry into the reviews 
to discuss him, even when we do not take his promises seri- 
ously. We turn to look at the man who has raised the cry of 
" Fire ! " although we feel sure that there is no conflagration 



The World of Sober Earnest 257 

in the vicinity. Similarly, we read the works of the moralist 
who tells us that obedience to the law is little better than 
bovine, and that murder and robbery are the virtues of the 
blond. Is not what he says " original" ? " vital" ? " suggestive" ? 
Shall not philosophy aim at the complete satisfaction of man ? 
even at the satisfaction of his love of the sensational ? But 
the sober philosopher, who is absorbed in the endeavor to get 
and to impart to others clear notions of the constitution of 
Everybody's World, feels himself very much under objective 
control, and he hesitates to announce startling discoveries 
which he secretly feels that he cannot substantiate in 
detail. 

This brings me to the doctrine discussed in the last chapter, 
namely, that the world is ours to unmake and to remake. 
That the pragmatists, I mean the undiluted pragmatists, 
have startled men by raising the cry of " Fire ! " I think there 
can be no question. Yet the world does not burn, as we all 
know. It is well for the philosopher who takes his duty 
seriously to reassure his neighbors on this point. As for the 
moderate pragmatist, who supports the pragmatic thesis 
that things burn by pointing out that there really has been 
fire, since some one indubitably struck a match to light his 
cigar — he need cause little uneasiness to our commonplace 
Everybody. We have only to call attention to the fact that it 
has on all sides been admitted that men can and do strike 
matches, as also to the fact there is a consensus of opinion 
touching the propriety of striking matches on certain occasions 
and not doing so on others. 

The philosopher should, then, come back to Everybody's 
World rather as a quiet guide than as a setter up of new notions 
and a revolutionist. He should insist that the world is Phe- 
nomenon — the very stuff of experience — but he should not 
forget to indicate that we have had to do with this all along, 
and are really very well adjusted to it. He should be willing 



258 The World We Live In 

to admit that there is much good sense and dependable informa- 
tion in Everybody's World. Men know a good deal about the 
system of physical things and something about minds. That 
their knowledge is in certain respects indefinite, and that re- 
flective knowledge is difficult of access to all, and impossible 
to some, does not mean that there is no settled knowledge, nor 
does it invalidate the usually accepted methods of proof and 
make verification a thing to scoff at. The long experience of 
the race is not to be despised. 

To be sure, the old order is changing. Knowledge begets 
knowledge ; some beliefs are discovered to be erroneous ; new 
facts present themselves. But this phenomenon is not a new 
one, and has long been discounted in advance. The old order 
always has been changing, and men have all along been mak- 
ing new adjustments. The more quietly they can do so, the 
better it seems to be for the progress of science. 

All this the philosopher knows, and this he should bring to 
the attention of his fellows. But it is not his function to dwell 
unduly upon the limitations of science. There is much that is 
settled, so settled that it is wise for us to tell those whom we are 
called upon to instruct that they must adjust themselves to it 
under penalty of perishing miserably. And that which we 
seem under obligation to accept as settled does not necessarily 
depend for its truth upon what is as yet uncertain. When we 
are in a mood to degrade science and exalt philosophy, we are 
apt to point out that little is known of remote regions in space, 
of the distant past and future of our world, of the intimate con- 
stitution of matter. Yet our ignorance in these fields in no- 
wise affects a multitude of other things which we know, and 
which it is of the utmost importance for us to know. More- 
over, if we ever do extend our knowledge in these fields, it will 
be by frankly accepting and using as a basis the information 
which we have so far had the good fortune to acquire. It will 
not be by looking forward and refusing to take into considera- 



The World of Sober Earnest 259 

tion the experience which lies behind. In science, the admoni- 
tion to look forward must be most carefully guarded. 

From the injurious superstition touching what, by the 
irony of fate, have come to be called Ultimate Truths, it is 
time that both those who inhabit Everybody's World and those 
who make excursions beyond its confines should be set free. 
He who has traveled far and has kept his eyes open is not much 
impressed by what some travelers on their return say about 
Ultimate Truth. Must the man of science apologize to the 
philosopher for believing that the sun shines by day and 
the moon by night? that water seeks its own level? that 
arsenic should not be a bulky ingredient in foods intended for 
human beings ? Must he be ashamed of his " approximations," 
and stand ready to admit that no science capable of improve- 
ment may properly be called science at all ? Must he say : 
"I do not mean to be taken literally ; I am merely speaking, 
for convenience, as if the moon had another side, and as if 
a ton of coal weighed more than the mote in a sunbeam"? 
He who is not bent double under the weight of his own learn- 
ing has surely had it brought before his eyes that truths not 
supposed to be ultimate — the plain truths recognized by 
plain men and men of science — are often truths generally 
accepted, constantly verified, based upon indubitable proofs, 
testified to by sensation's irremediable flow and by the coercions 
of the world of sense ; while the truths fondly spoken of as ulti- 
mate are too often truths of such a complexion that he who 
enunciates them can scarcely get any one else to admit that 
they are truths at all or that what he urges in their support 
is properly to be called evidence. 

I say this, not with any intention of disparaging the philos- 
opher. I have spent my life in philosophy, and I love it. 
But it is of no small importance to recognize that the philos- 
opher is not a being whom we should put in a niche and before 
whom we should light a lamp. He is a man whose duty it is to 



260 The World We Live In 

get a clearer and more comprehending view of Everybody's 
World ; a man with a difficult task before him ; a man peculiarly 
liable to the error of confusing what he sees with what he merely 
imagines. He should speak with diffidence, and when the bold 
features of Everybody's World plainly give the lie to his utter- 
ances ; he should be willing to withdraw them. Of that world 
he may not speak with contempt. Were it not there, he would 
be deprived of his occupation. 

To sum up. The world we actually live in, the world of our 
experience, is a world of sober earnest. It has no place for 
the baseless skepticism that will not recognize truth at all, nor 
for the childish credulity that is incapable of discrimination. 
It would unhesitatingly eliminate those unwise enough to carry 
into practice the doctrine that the men and things we daily 
meet with are shadows and unrealities. It stubbornly resists 
transformation, however gracefully the magician may wave his 
wand. It is too big to be bullied, and it must be accepted, in 
great part, as it presents itself. It cannot properly be said 
that we unmake and remake it when we avert our eyes from one 
thing in it and turn them upon another. 

There is a body of human knowledge to which it is prudent 
for us to adjust ourselves. There are ways of adding to human 
knowledge, approved by the experience of centuries, and cer- 
tainly not discredited by anything that has been discovered in 
our time. And whether man is concerned to make use of that 
which he already knows, or is concerned to press forward to 
new knowledge, he appears to live under the reign of law. The 
world we live in dispenses with sovereign power rewards and 
punishments. It does not reward ignorance, nor does it deal 
tenderly with the petulance that refuses to recognize that it 
stands under authority. Surely a wise philosophy of life will 
counsel a man to adjust himself as cheerfully as he can to what 
is known, making the best of it for himself and for others, and 
to walk through life with open eyes, that he may increase his 
knowledge and not be overtaken by calamity unawares. 



The World of Sober Earnest 261 

The body of human knowledge indisputably accepted is, 
however, limited. Even the realm of the physicist has an in- 
definite boundary, where no man can walk with confidence. 
The layman into whose hands falls the volume published at 
Cambridge in commemoration of the centenary celebration 
in honor of that great citizen of Everybody's World, Charles 
Darwin, is brought to a vivid realization of the fact that 
there is much dispute in the sciences which occupy themselves 
with the study of the manifestations of Life. Who has a right 
to dogmatize in the realms of psychology, aesthetics, ethics, 
sociology, epistemology, metaphysics? Who is justified in 
laying down the law and severely condemning differences of 
opinion in that fascinating domain assigned to religion ? To 
what we definitely know we can with more or less accuracy 
adjust ourselves. But may a philosophy of life embrace 
within its view only what we definitely and certainly know ? 
may it ignore all else ? 

As a matter of fact, neither the plain man nor the scholar 
shows a tendency to limit himself in this way. He reaches 
out, as a rule, to the Beyond; sometimes with boldness; some- 
times with a painful sense that he has not attempted to justify 
his right to do so; and sometimes in a half-hearted and in- 
consistent way born of his lack of confidence. It is of this 
Beyond, and of man's adjustment to it, that I shall speak 
in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE WORLD OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE WORLD OP BELIEF 

When William James published his lecture on the " Will to 
Believe," that declaration of the Rights of Man which has 
attracted so much attention in recent years, a sigh of relief was 
breathed by a vast number of persons who were oppressed by 
the sense that, even if they claimed freedom, they had no real 
right to do so. Some were philosophers ; some were men who 
had little direct acquaintance with philosophy. The door to a 
legitimate freedom seemed to be set open, and the sweeter air 
of the outer world tempered at once the atmosphere of the 
prison house. Some, chiefly philosophers, objected to the 
draught which was set up, and at once entered a protest. 
But, on the whole, men rejoiced, and men continue to rejoice. 

The fact is, that the bold assertion of the right to permit faith 
to rise to a height unattainable by indubitable evidence seemed 
to strengthen a claim very dear to the heart, and which man- 
kind has urged from time immemorial. Men have always 
guided their lives in accordance with the principle ; here they 
rind themselves justified. 

What men have done, and what men do, we have only to 
open our eyes to see for ourselves. In the gradual evolution of 
a social order which has resulted in making the life of man 
something different from the existence of the brute, conscious 
reasoning has undoubtedly played its part. No one would 
dream of denying that. Nor, I suppose, would any one care to 
deny that it is desirable that men should see clearly, and should 
be capable of regarding critically their own lives and the social 
order in which they are imbedded. But to suppose that 
262 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 263 

there ever has been a time in which the social, political, 
and ethical faiths which have animated men's actions have 
been based wholly upon marshaled evidence, and have been 
given their distinctive outlines as a result of explicit reasonings, 
is to betray an ignorance of man that seems little excusable. 
Man lives first and thinks afterwards ; he desires, and he then 
becomes partially conscious of what it is that he desires; he 
wills, and it is only with effort that he attains to a clear realiza- 
tion of what it is that he wills. All is not in the foreground of 
the picture, all lines are not sharp and hard ; there are mysteri- 
ous depths and shadowy outlines which he feels rather than 
sees, but which cannot be left out of account by one who would 
appreciate justly the significance of the whole. 

Take men as they are. How many men are in a position to 
give explicit reasons for the implicitly accepted maxims which 
guide their daily lives ? for the exceptions which they make in 
the applications of such? for their likes and dislikes? for 
their approval of certain innovations ? for the instinct which 
warns them that certain others will result in loss and not in 
gain ? When they are asked to justify their attitude, they 
usually adduce reasons which really have very little to do with 
motives which actually impel them — superficial reasons, 
plausible reasons, reasons which sound well in discussion, but 
are of little actual sign ficance. The complicated system of 
forces, the total outcome of which is the social order which em- 
braces us and supports us, does not lie wholly in the light of day. 
To throw light upon it, so far as we can, is a manifest duty ; 
to ignore all that is not brightly illuminated, and to reason 
consequently upon such a basis, argues a keen but a narrow 
and unsympathetic mind, and a courage not easy to differen- 
tiate from obstinacy. 

Sometimes individuals, ignoring the actual nature of man 
and the place which he now occupies in the evolution of things, 
suggest the arbitrary conversion of the City of this World into 



264 The World We Live In 

a New Republic, where inherited prejudices shall be put away, 
and where pure reason shall reign supreme. They had better 
legislate for possible inhabitants of the planet Mars. We know 
little of such, and we can assume that this airy and ideal legis- 
lation may fit the conditions which obtain among them. But 
we do know something of men, and we know that their future 
and their past are knit together in a way that cannot be safely 
disregarded. Those to whom is intrusted the responsible task 
of governing men are better aware of this than are those who 
view them from a distance, and whose immediate dealings are 
with ink and paper. The fact is not without its significance. 
And when a whole people decides to forget its past, and to con- 
struct for itself a future of an impossible radiance based upon 
reason, falsely so called, the result is something like anarchy. 
It would be complete anarchy were it not that it is impossible 
for man to forget completely. No civilization could survive a 
chronic French Revolution in every European and American 
state. The worst of Asiatic despotisms would outdistance us. 
Neither the state nor the individual can get on without what 
the unsympathetic call historical prejudices. The purely 
rational anatomist conceived by the immortal Jean Paul stands 
lower than the savage. The latter is at least to some degree 
adjusted to tribal needs and to tribal regulations. The former 
is fit only to be marooned. 

It may be said that all this applies only to the unreflective. 
That the philosopher is a soul that dwells apart, and is above 
human weaknesses. Perhaps this prejudice of the vulgar is 
due in part to the fact that the philosopher is apt to speak in 
such a way that few can understand clearly what he is saying. 
Were the philosopher really so independent and unprejudiced 
a creature as we are sometimes given to understand that he is, 
the history of philosophy could be read backwards as conven- 
iently as it can be read forwards. System would not rise out of 
system as it manifestly does. There would be no schools in 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 265 

philosophy. That there are such cannot be attributed to the 
fact that a philosopher leaves behind him a basis of indubitable 
truth upon which his successor, if he is to build at all, must per- 
force stand. Men of equal intelligence embrace widely diverg- 
ing doctrines, and there is no unquestionably objective con- 
trol, no irrefutable verification, which can coerce them into 
agreement. Here again let us look at the actual facts. Why 
is one man a scholastic, another a Hegelian, a third a positivist, 
a fourth a Spencerian, a fifth a pragmatist ? He knows the 
philosophers little who supposes that each is an impersonal 
mouthpiece through which the passionless voice of reason 
communicates to us its colorless utterances. 

That the philosopher is a man, and like other men, is swayed 
by the impulse to believe even where there is not present such 
evidence as men generally would admit to be scientifically 
coercive, appears to be a patent fact. That he tries to be 
objective, so far as he can, let us freely admit. But let us 
recognize that he is a man. And he is, as a rule, a man influ- 
enced by his emotions, and in need of some satisfying outlook 
upon life. 

The philosopher has, in his day, bowed down to gods many 
and to lords many. He is still to be found on his knees before 
a variety of shrines. Think of the " One's," the " Absolute's," 
the " Ultimate Reality's," the " Unknowable's", the " Over- 
soul's," the " Super-individual Ego's," the " Nature's," the 
" Cosmic Will's," that have compelled his adoration ! Devout 
he has almost always been, in his own way. And he has de- 
fended with zeal and ingenuity the God or Pseudo-god which he 
believes himself to have freely chosen, setting forth, often with 
much feeling, His nature and attributes, adducing reasons 
why other men should come to share his allegiance, persuading 
them to bow the head in the twilight of the same fane. 

When those who have not been schooled by him in their 
youth come to examine his account of the object of his wor- 



266 The World We Live In 

ship, they are sometimes filled with admiration of his specula- 
tive genius, and often with wonder at the transparent empti- 
ness of the Abstraction upon the altar. They ask themselves 
how it is possible that a man of such clear vision has found it 
possible to balance himself upon his bridge of a single hair, and, 
nevertheless, to persuade himself that his feet have never left 
the solid ground. 

All honor to the philosopher. He reflects, and men gener- 
ally reflect little. He tries to be independent, and he partially 
succeeds. We cannot severely blame him for lacking an inde- 
pendence which appears to be unbecoming to a civilized man. 
"An ill-favored thing, but mine own," said Touchstone; 
" Not an ill-favored thing, because mine own," says, in effect, 
the philosopher; and he is in some danger of forgetting that 
certain of his colleagues have put upon the credulity of human 
nature a strain at least equal to that laid upon it by the theo- 
logian when at his worst. Independence may, in general, be 
said to make for progress ; but an irresponsible independence, 
in a field in winch objective control is not everywhere to be met 
with, may easily degenerate into eccentricty which does not aid 
progress at all. 

The philosopher is, then, a man, even if a reflective creature. 
I cannot see why he should not acknowledge the same obliga- 
tions to society which are openly or tacitly admitted by other 
men. " I stand absolutely alone," said an eminent German 
artist, who happened to be at the same time a man of science 
and much interested in religious problems ; " my opinions are 
wholly independent, and uninfluenced by those of others." 
To this I was obliged to answer : " Such an independence must 
give an agreeable sense of freedom ; but, were it adopted by 
men generally, there would be no such thing as society." Nor 
was there lacking the further reflection that, if the words of the 
speaker were literally true in a broad sense, he would long be- 
fore have been eliminated by society altogether. 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 267 

Pure reason can precipitate nothing out of the void. May 
we sweep our net in empty space to collect notions of what is 
meant by justice, by a fair wage, by the courtesy which one 
human being may expect from another? What aberrations 
may not be expected of those who would insert the knife of 
their pitiless logic and make a sweeping cut between what is 
and what ought to be ! I have heard an eloquent speaker, at 
a meeting called in one European country to protest against 
an act of tyranny perpetrated in another, urge upon four thou- 
sand of his countrymen the introduction into elementary schools 
of the teachings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. To be sure, 
he thought that, for the very young, the milk of human kind- 
ness drawn from these sources should be partially sterilized 
in the laboratory of his own- intelligence. 

The Will to Believe is everywhere. Neither the plain man, 
the man of science, nor the philosopher can justly claim to be 
uninfluenced by it. And its influence is so overwhelming, so 
significant for human life, that it becomes of no small impor- 
tance to ask what checks should be set upon it, what rules of a 
general character, at least, it should be expected to observe. 

It seems the first duty of one, revolving in his mind the prob- 
lem of what it is wise for a man to believe, tentatively at 
least, in the broad region not yet inclosed by fences of scien- 
tific evidence strengthened by measured props of probable error, 
to bear in mind that the present has grown out of the past, and 
derives its significance from it. One point is not enough to 
determine the direction of motion. The man too modern to 
recognize that there is a road behind him cannot know whither 
he is tending. It is to the present and to the immediate fu- 
ture that the mass of men are called upon to adjust themselves. 
Of the remote future we know too little to give it a serious claim 
upon us. It is not our duty to cultivate in ourselves vices which 
may pass as virtues in some remote and highly problematic 
age which may have little or nothing in common with the age 



268 The World We Live In 

in which we are called upon to live. If any one wishes to specu- 
late regarding such, let him speculate, and let him remember 
that his speculations should not be allowed to stand in the way 
of the serious business of life as it is carried on in our time. 
This truth is, I think, fairly well recognized by most men of 
sober mind who occupy themselves with social and ethical 
problems and are not concerned to create a sensation. They 
furnish, as a rule, little material of journalistic interest. 

Is it otherwise in religion? Men find themselves in the 
presence of certain historic faiths which claim the allegiance 
of whole nations. Faiths weighted with the authority of an 
august past, rich in the associations which feed helpful emotion, 
provided with rituals which give concrete expression and a 
certain stability to conceptions and ideals which without some 
such aid seem in danger of proving elusive and evanescent. 
Faiths which draw man close to man in a common hope, and 
awaken a sympathy in which many may have their share. 
They have grown as the state has grown, and have survived the 
shocks of successive revolutions. They seem to embody a 
Life, contact with which has been prized by countless multi- 
tudes, and in approaching which men have sought and found 
consolation. 

This sphere has always been the sphere in which the Will to 
Believe has obtained especial recognition. So important has 
it been deemed that it has been urged as a duty, and not infre- 
quently has been treated as the proper subject of rewards and 
penalties. The abuses to which this has given rise are recorded 
in the pages of history. Such records one may read with mixed 
feelings. On the one hand, they speak to us eloquently of the 
intolerance of man ; on the other, they bring us to a vivid con- 
sciousness of the fact that it has always been regarded as of the 
utmost importance that man should believe, should cherish 
hopes and ideals which seem not of our commonplace every- 
day world, as also of the fact that belief has been recognized 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 269 

to be partly an affair of the will and not merely of the intellect. 
The doctrine of the Will to Believe is nothing new. In the time 
to come, the historian of philosophy will recognize in what has 
recently attracted so much attention from the philosophers 
only a local revival of interest in what has always tacitly been 
accepted as a fact by men generally, but has sometimes been 
allowed to slip out of view by those who make a profession of 
thinking. 

What shall be our attitude towards the historic faiths? 
Shall the Will to Believe be exercised quite independently? 
or shall it be urged that they have some especial claim upon 
it? 

Men generally decide the question much as they decide the 
question touching their social and ethical beliefs. They dis- 
trust the whim of the individual. They value the sense of 
solidarity. They think that what has come to be as a result of 
an evolution from the past, has, in so far, the prior claim. 
Undoubtedly this may result in the retention of ancient abuses, 
but it at least makes for stability in the evolution of society. 
That all men are conservative, no one could maintain, nor that 
conservation reigns equally in all places or in all ages. It does, 
however, play a very considerable part in making it possible 
that there should be religions and religious observances to 
which men may turn, in place of a countless swarm of bodiless 
opinions bewildering to the plain man, and as perplexing even 
to the more thoughtful as the history of philosophy is to the 
average undergraduate. 

Should men be conservative in this field ? Why hold to 
ancient superstitions instead of cheerfully accepting new truth, 
when there are so many who offer it freely ? To this I append 
the remark that "superstition" is an abusive epithet. Its 
use indicates that we have already condemned the belief to 
which we apply the name. But I shall not quarrel with the 
word. I shall merely point out that prudent men, even when 



270 The World We Live In 

rather unreflective, are not without some justification in their 
instinctive distrust of what are called new superstitions. There 
are those to whom mere newness is a recommendation — who 
like the stimulus of novelty, who take pleasure in the thought 
that they are in all respects abreast of the times. 

But the more reflective and the more cautious remark that 
there is apt to be something crude and acrid about a new super- 
stition. The intemperate enthusiasm of its votaries has not 
yet been moderated by the realization of the fact that beliefs 
must adjust themselves, under penalties, to the demands of 
experience. We are supposed to be in the realm of the "Be- 
yond," to be discussing beliefs lying beyond the borders of 
science in the strict sense of the word, and where evidence is 
not a thing to be measured and accurately estimated. Mani- 
festly, if such beliefs trespass upon the domain of science, and 
deny that for which we have palpable evidence, they must un- 
dergo transformation or cease to be. As a rule, they do undergo 
transformation. What is realized to be harmful is eliminated, 
or is given but a formal recognition and is deprived of its power 
to do hurt. What is found to be helpful and stimulating is 
given emphasis. The implicit" reason of the race justifies 
itself with the progress of time. The sharp and jagged edges 
of the newly broken fragment of quartz, subjected to the attri- 
tion of the passing hours, are worn away, and the smooth round 
pebble no longer wounds our fingers. 

It has been well pointed out that what present themselves as 
new truths recommend themselves to us, aside from the ques- 
tion of the quantity and quality of the objective evidence upon 
which they appear to rest, in proportion to the insignificance 
of the derangement which they occasion to common sense and 
previous belief, and to the feebleness of the "jolt" to which 
they subject us. In fields in which the evidence submitted is 
indisputable and susceptible of rather accurate measurement, 
the question whether the new or the old shall triumph seems to 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 2 7 1 

be no more than a trial of strength between two bodies of evi- 
dence. The old is admitted to have weight, not because we 
happen to be adjusted to it, but because it can be shown to be 
proven in certain definite ways. Many a man has been com- 
pelled to recognize truth that has "jolted" him intolerably; 
that has, indeed, deranged his previous beliefs in such a way as 
to render necessary his seclusion and retirement from an active 
participation in the affairs of men. 

But, in the field of which we are speaking, the matter of the 
" jolt," in itself considered, seems to take on a somewhat differ- 
ent complexion. The Will to Believe does not stand alone and 
supreme. It is the handmaid of the Will to Live. Faith 
soars, not aimlessly, but that it may catch glimpses of some 
light which may serve to guide the weary and faltering steps 
of Life. Men generally do not feel that they live most satis- 
factorily when they rise up and lie down with arms in their 
hands. He who must hold himself ready to embrace a new 
faith every day is as little fitted to adjust his life to any faith 
as is the man who expects hourly the attack of the enemy to 
devote himself to the arts of peace. 

It seems, then, that something can be said for the man of 
conservative instincts, who distrusts revolutionary innova- 
tions, and whose impulse is to accommodate himself, more or 
less, to what is. To be sure, if peace be his only object, he 
runs the risk of accommodating himself to what has wholly 
outlived its usefulness, to what is dead or moribund. In that 
case, he will seek out the garden of the sluggard, and will 
stretch himself in a sunny spot on a bed of weeds. But there 
is no principle which may not be misapplied by those disposed 
to pervert it ; and it is worthy of remark that those who have 
recently disturbed our philosophic calm by a clamorous insist- 
ence upon the rights of the Will to Believe have not been 
sluggards at all, but very restless fellows, who would keep open 
the eyes of the most somnolent in their vicinity. 



272 The World We Live In 

It will be observed that I have above spoken generally. I 
have said nothing to indicate that what are now old beliefs 
were not once new and that it was not the duty of the prudent 
man to weigh them carefully before accepting them. I have 
not meant to insist that all of those systems of belief and prac- 
tice which have succeeded in holding the allegiance of great 
masses of men stand upon the same level, nor that it may not 
be the duty of those capable of critical reflection to pass some- 
times from one to another. I have not intended to maintain 
that he who exercises the Will to Believe must forswear the 
right to give reasons for his belief and to point out that one 
belief may be more reasonable than another. Nor should it 
be supposed that I desire to put all men upon the same level — 
the strong and the weak, the intellectual and the uncritical, 
the learned and the ignorant. It is not to be expected that a 
man of broad information and vigorous understanding will 
hold, even toward a system of belief and practice from which 
he regards it as wrong to cut himself off, and which he sincerely 
values, just the same attitude as that taken by men whose 
guide is instinct unenlightened by criticism. If, on that 
account, men see fit to cast him out from among them, he can 
wash his hands of the matter. In our day it is not difficult for 
him to find another refuge, and he is not compelled to walk 
quite alone. But I have meant to make it clear that the Will 
to Believe is a social phenomenon, and that even a being so 
exalted as the philosopher may not feel free to forget that he is 
also a man. Sometimes he is in danger of letting the fact 
escape his memory. 

It is with rather reluctant feet that I have wandered into 
the subject of the present chapter. The ground I tread seems 
to belong, of right, to the prophet. Yet how could the excur- 
sion be avoided? How can one discuss the World We Live 
In without recognizing the fact that, both in Everybody's 
World and in the World of the Scholar, there are dim distances, 



World of Knowledge and World of Belief 273 

shadowy outlines, subdued and faintly apprehended radi- 
ances, which give soul to the picture ? Can such be left out 
of our World- vision ? Have they no significance for a Philoso- 
phy of Life ? I have said in the first chapter of this book that 
what thoughtful men burn to attain to is not merely clarity 
of vision. They desire a Rule of Life which will not seem 
unworthy of confidence, and to which they may commit 
themselves with some degree of consistency. 

And, to content the sober-minded, the Rule of Life sought 
must not rest upon some dazzling misconception of the nature 
of the world as it is actually revealed to human knowledge. 
Everybody's World must not be allowed to drop wholly out of 
sight, and its features to be expelled from our minds. It 
must be honestly accepted, and its shadows as well as its bright 
places frankly recognized. Nevertheless, we must have cour- 
age, and must make the best of the World We Live In. Our 
task appears to be a threefold one : to adjust ourselves seri- 
ously to what is definitely known of reality, while keeping our 
eyes open to possible sources of new light ; to face life bravely, 
giving play to hope and confidence in the Heart of the World ; 
to avoid, in willing to believe and in daring to hope, the dead- 
ening extreme of bigotry and willful blindness. 

Is this threefold task one which may successfully be accom- 
plished ? I believe there are vast numbers of men and women, 
many of whom have little learning and make no pretensions to 
philosophy, who yet are accomplishing it with varying degrees 
of success. Their attitude toward the world, raised by reflec- 
tion to the dignity of a philosophy of life, may be described as 
a sober philosophy, which regards the body of human knowl- 
edge as too weighty a thing to be blown hither and thither by 
every gust of speculation ; a serious philosophy, to which the 
problem of the nature of the world is something more than a 
matter of intellectual curiosity ; a tolerant philosophy, which, 
possessing no magic formula of its own and looking for none 



274 The World We Live In 

from others, speaks without dogmatism and holds its conclu- 
sions tentatively. 

It is not every one, as was pointed out in the opening chap- 
ter of the book, to whom such a philosophy appeals. I offer 
it to those only who care to accept it, and can make some use 
of it. He who wishes to try his wings may reject the staff 
which I, with some hesitation, hold out to those who prefer 
walking. 



NOTES 

Chapter I 

1 See the admirable discussion of "Naive Realism," by Professor Dickinson S. 
Miller, in "Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James," 
London, 1890. 

Chapter II 

^or Plato's theory of sense-perception see Siebeck, " Geschichte der Psy- 
chologic," Gotha, 1880, Bd. I, 2, S. 208-228. 

2 Siebeck, Ibid., Bd. II, 1, 2. 

3 Aristotle's "Metaphysics," III, 5, 6. 

4 For the epistemology of the Stoics see Zeller, " The Philosophy of the Greeks." 

6 Zeller, Ibid., on the epistemology of the Epicureans. 

See Diogenes Laertius, " Pyrrho " ; Professor Raoul Richter's "Der Skepti- 
zismus in der Philosophic," Volume I, Leipzig, 1904, contains an extended and 
interesting exposition and criticism of the Greek skepticism. I must confess 
that I cannot give the Skeptics credit for so much consistency as does the author. 
See Zeller, "The Philosophy of the Greeks," under "Pyrrho and the New Acad- 
emy." 

7 "Solibquia," II, 1 ; "De Trinitate," X, 5, 6, 13-16; "De Civitate Dei," XI, 
26; XIX, 18. 

8 Siebeck, "Geschichte der Psychologie," II, iv, 2. 

9 For Occam's position see Baeumker, "Allgemeine Geschichte der Philoso- 
phic," "Kultur der Gegenwart," ed. Hinneberg, Teil I, Abteilung 5, S. 369; 
Siebeck, "Occams Erkenntnisslehre in ihrer historischen Stellung." "Archiv 
fur Geschichte der Philosophie," Bd. X, S. 322 ; Stockl, " Geschichte der 
Philosophic des Mittelalters," II, S. 994. 

10 "Libri Sententiarum Questio Prima." 

11 Descartes, "Discourse on Method," IV; "Meditations," VI. 
12 Locke, "Essay," Book I. 

13 Descartes, "Meditations," III; Locke, "Essay," Book IV, Chapter XL 

14 See Zeller on the Atomistic Doctrine, "The Philosophy of the Greeks," 
under "The Pre-Socratic Philosophy," Part II; cf. Locke, "Essay," Book II, 
Chapter VIII. 

Chapter III 

1 See Zeller, "The Philosophy of the Greeks," under "Plato and the Old 
Academy." Zeller emphasizes the fact that the Platonic Ideas are in no sense 

2 75 



276 The World We Live In 

psychical. See also Windelband, "History of Philosophy," Part I, Chapter 
III, § 11 : "The Platonic conception of immateriality is in nowise coincident 
with that of the spiritual or psychical, as might easily be assumed from the 
modern mode of thinking." (Eng. trans., New York, 1001.) 

2 "Essay," Book I, Chapter I, § 8. 

3 "A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge," § 4. 

4 Ibid., § 6. 
B Ibid,.§§ 28-33. 

6 "An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision." 

7 "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous," III, at end. 

8 Ibid., II. 

9 " Principles," §§ 25-32. 

10 Ibid., § 141. 

Chapter IV 

1 "Principles of Human Knowledge," §§ 3-4. 

2 Ibid, §§ 45-48. 

3 Ibid, § 94. 

4 Ibid, § 3. 

6 "An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," Chapter XL 

6 "A System of Logic," Book I, Chapter III. 

7 Professor Mach's views have been so much discussed that it seems scarcely 
worth while to give references. The reader will find a good brief account of 
them in The Philosophical Review XIV, 5. 

8 "The Grammar of Science," second edition, Chapter II, §§ 11-12. 

9 The most earnest of realists should admit that it is unfair to include all who 
enroll themselves as idealists under the ban of one common condemnation. 
The realist is compelled to concede that some of those writing at the present 
day appear to be as anxious to recognize an objective order of things as he is 
himself. He may claim that a certain habit of thought and speech, due to the 
influence of the idealistic tradition with which they have not broken, seems to 
add to the difficulty of treating the objective as sharply and unequivocally such. 
But confuse such objective idealists with writers like Mach and Pearson he may 
not. To me some of them appear to be on the highroad to a sober realism. 
Compare, for example, with the authors above criticized, such writers as Bos- 
anquet, Albee, Creighton, and Bakewell. The title which a man accepts should 
not blind our eyes to what he means to say. 

Chapter V 

1 Hume, "Treatise," Book I, Part IV, § 2 ; "Enquiry," § XII. 

2 This was Kant's case. The " Critique of Pure Reason" appeared in 1781; 
Garve's criticism in 1782; Kant's rejoinder, the "Prolegomena to Every Future 
Metaphysic," in 1783; and the second edition of the "Critique" in 1787. 



Notes 277 

3 " Kritik der reinen Vernunft," " Allgemeine Anmerkungen zur transscendalen 
Aesthetik," ed. Hartenstein, Leipzig, 1867, Ed. Ill, S. 78-79. All German 
references to follow are to this edition of Kant's works. For the convenience 
of the English reader I shall give references also to Meiklejohn's translation of 
the "Critique" (London, George Bell and Sons), which is likely to be within 
reach of all. Thus : " Critique," " General Remarks on Transcendental /Esthet- 
ics," III, p. 42. It is scarcely necessary to say that I have everywhere made 
my own translations, and am alone responsible for the expressions used. 

4 " Prolegomena zu einer jeden Ktinftigen Metaphysik," Anhang, Harten- 
stein, Bd. IV, S. 122. For the convenience of the English reader I give refer- 
ences also to E. Belfort Bax's translation of the "Prolegomena" (London, 
George Bell and Sons), Bax, Appendix, p. 124. 

B Ibid. 

6 Ibid., S. 122-123; Bax, p. 125. 

7 Ibid., S. 123; Bax, p. 125. I have rendered "schwarmerisch" by the use 
of the word "extravagant." Earlier in the same work Kant characterizes 
Berkeley's doctrine as "mystisch und schwarmerisch" (see S. 41; Bax, p. 40). 
Another of Kant's expressions for his own doctrine is " transcendental idealism " ; 
see the " Critique," under " The Antinomy of Pure Reason," the section entitled : 
"Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of the Cosmological 
Dialectic." 

8 Among these we may class those who insist upon treating the first edition 
as authoritative, and who republish it as a text or make from it their transla- 
tions. 

9 "Prolegomena," Theil, I, § 13, Anmerkung, III ; Hartenstein, IV, S. 42; 
Bax, p. 40. Ibid., Anhang, S. 123; Bax, pp. 124-125. 

10 See the footnote in Kant's Preface to the second edition of the " Critique," 
in which the author tries to make it clear that his "Refutation of Idealism" 
really is what the title indicates. 

11 "Critique," first edition, " Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Under- 
standing," Part II; Hartenstein, III, S. 567. 

12 Ibid., S. 573- 

u "Prolegomena," Anhang, S. 123; Bax, pp. 124-125. 

Chapter VI 

1 "Prolegomena," I, 13, Anmerkung II ; Hartenstein, IV, S. 37-38; Bax, pp. 
35-36. Kant refers to Locke's making the secondary qualities of bodies sub- 
jective, and says that he affirms the same of the primary, without, on that 
account, denying the existence of the thing. 

2 It seems almost a waste of time to try to prove that Kant did not discard 
the "thing-in-itself," but really supposed it to be of some positive significance. 
The opening sentences of the "Critique of Pure Reason," sentences which 
appear both in the earlier and in the later editions of that work, and are supported 



278 The World We Live In 

by the doctrine of the "Prolegomena" (see the preceding note), are quite char- 
acteristic: "In whatever way and by whatever means knowledge may refer 
to objects, nevertheless, that through which it is directly related to them, and 
upon which all thinking must ultimately rest, is intuition. But an intuition 
can only exist in so far as the object is given to us; and this, again, is, in the 
case of human beings, at least, only made possible by the object's affecting the 
mind in a certain manner. The capacity for getting presentations through the 
mode in which we are affected by objects is called the faculty of sense. Hence, 
it is through our faculty of sense that objects are given us, and that faculty 
alone furnishes us with intuitions. These intuitions are thought by means of 
the understanding, which faculty is the source of conceptions." 

The situation which Kant here tries to bring before us he endeavors to make 
still more clear in the recapitulation given in his "General Remarks on Tran- 
scendental /Esthetics" : "We have meant, then, to say, that all our intuition is 
nothing else than the presentation of phenomena; that the things given in 
intuition are not in themselves constituted as they appear to us, nor are their 
relations in themselves of such a nature as they seem to us to be. Furthermore 
that if we abstract the subject, or even the subjective constitution of the senses, 
the whole constitution of objects in space and time, all their relations, nay, 
space and time themselves, would disappear. These things, as phenomena, 
cannot have an independent existence, but must exist merely in us. How it may 
be with the objects in themselves, and abstracted from all this receptivity of 
our faculty of sense, remains quite unknown to us. We know nothing but our 
way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and must belong to every human 
being, though not necessarily to every creature. With this alone do we have to 
do." Hartenstein, III, S. 72; Meiklejohn, pp. 35-36. 

3 See, for example, what Kant has to say about the noumenon taken in the 
negative sense : " On the Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena 
and Noumena," Hartenstein, III, S. 219-222; Meiklejohn, pp. 185-188. 

4 See the definition of "body" given in the citation adduced just above in the 
text of Chapter VI. 

B See the Preface to the second edition of the "Critique," where it is insisted 
that the word "object" may be taken in two senses: first, as standing for a 
phenomenon; second, as indicating a thing-in-itself. It is held that the object 
as thing-in-itself cannot be known, although it may be thought. Compare 
"Prolegomena," III, § 52, c; Hartenstein, IV, S. 89-90; Bax, p. 90. 

6 "Prolegomena," II, § 14; Hartenstein, IV, S. 66-68; Bax, pp. 68-70. 

7 "Critique." See the discussion referred to in note 3 (above). 
8 "Kritik," "Der transscendentale Idealismus, als der Schlussel zur Auflosung 

der kosmologischen Dialektik"; Hartenstein, III, S. 346-347; Meiklejohn, 

P- 3°7- 

9 Ibid., S. 347 ; Meiklejohn, p. 307. 

10 Ibid., S. 348; Meiklejohn, p. 308. 

""Prolegomena," Anhang, Hartenstein, IV, S. 122-123; Bax, pp. 125-126. 



Notes 2 79 



12 See, for Berkeley's doctrine of "real" things, what has been said in Chapter 
III. 

13 "Critique." See Note III in Kant's "Refutation of Idealism." 

14 Ibid. See the paragraphs immediately preceding the "Refutation of Ideal- 
ism" incorporated in the second edition ; the paragraphs in question appear in 
both editions. 

15 "Prolegomena," III, § 49; Hartenstein, S. 84-85; Bax, p. 85. j 

16 "Kritik," Hartenstein, III, S. 198; Meiklejohn, p. 167. 
"Ibid. 

Chapter VII 

1 "Kritik," "Allgemeine Anmerkungen zur transscendentalen Aesthetik," 
Hartenstein, III, S. 73~74 ; Meiklejohn, pp. 35 ff . In these " General Remarks 
on Transcendental /Esthetics" Kant makes it very clear that all significant dis- 
tinctions fall within the limits of the phenomenal world. 

2 "Principles," §§ 33-36. 

Chapter VIII 

1 The term "Monism" cries aloud for accurate definition. If the man who 
uses it only means that the world is "somehow" one, he tells us nothing of his 
doctrine. The only question that can interest us is : One, in what sense ? 

2 The term "Pluralism" stands in equal need of definition, if it is to have any 
value in distinguishing between philosophers. In one sense of the word, every 
man must be a pluralist, if he utters an intelligible sentence ; in another, no man 
can be pluralist, not even the proprietor of the "Hotel de l'Univers et de 
Geneve." 

3 See the chapter entitled "The Distribution of Minds," in my "System of 
Metaphysics." Also my papers on "The Doctrine of the Eject," in the Journal 
of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Volume IV, Nos. 19, 21, and 23. 

4 See my paper: "In What Sense Two Persons perceive the Same Thing," 
Philosophical Review, Volume XVI, No. 5. 

5 "Critique," "Transcendental /Esthetics," near the close of the discussion 
of Space. Hartenstein, III, S. 62 ; Meiklejohn, p. 26. 

6 Ibid. 

7 Ibid., § 6, Hartenstein, S. 68; Meiklejohn, p. 31. 

8 Ibid., § 8, Hartenstein, S. 72 ; Meiklejohn, p. 36. 

9 See, in the "Critique," "General Remarks on Transcendental ^Esthetics," 
IV, and "On the Ground of the Division of all Objects in general into Phenomena 
and Noumena" near the end. Hartenstein, III, S. 79, 221 ; Meiklejohn, pp. 43, 
186-1S7. 

10 See my paper: "The Influence of Darwin on the Mental and Moral 
Sciences," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 
XL VIII. 



280 The World We Live In 

Chapter IX 

1 See, for an extended discussion of the relation of mind and body, my "Sys- 
tem of Metaphysics," Chapters XVII-XXIV, and my "Introduction to Philos- 
ophy," Chapter IX. 

2 See the article: "Is the Mind in the Body?" in the Popular Science 
Monthly, May, 1907. 

3 That we are not concerned with the question of truth or falsity, when we 
contrast the experience of the world enjoyed by one creature with that enjoyed 
by another, is admirably brought out by Count von Keyserling in his 
"Prolegomena zur Naturphilosophie," Miinchen, 1910. 

4 Representative knowledge is recognized as a fact, as, indeed, it must be, 
both by the plain man and by the scholar. The philosopher is under no obliga- 
tion to assume that, whenever we use the expression, we mean to indicate that 
"ideas" represent a something by hypothesis so cut off from them that it be- 
comes inconceivable that it should be "represented" in any intelligible sense of 
the word. The analysis of representative knowledge has been undertaken, 
naturally, in somewhat different ways by different writers. Compare, for ex- 
ample, Professor James's "A World of Pure Experience," in the Journal of 
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Volume I, Nos. 20 and 21, 
with chapters I— III in Part III of Professor Hobhouse's " Theory of Knowl- 
edge." 

Chapter X 

1 Locke, "Essay," Book II, Chapter VIII, § 17. 



Chapter XI 

1 See Chapter IX. 

2 See the accounts of this philosophic survival in Green's " Prolegomena to 
Ethics." 

3 " Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James," 

P- 173- 
4 Ibid., p. 169. 

Chapter XII 

1 In justification of this judgment I must refer the reader to my two works : 
"The Philosophy of Spinoza," New York, 1894, and "On Spinozistic Immortal- 
ity," Philadelphia, 1899. 

2 For a detailed discussion of Clifford's positions see my "System of Meta- 
physics," pp. 298 ff., 307-312, 325 ff., 382-383, 438-440, 5I4-5I7- 

'"Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James," 
London, 1908, " Substitutionalism," by C. A. Strong, p. 173. 
* Ibid., p. 169. 



Notes 281 

5 My own position touching the relation of mind and body I have set forth at 
length in my "System of Metaphysics," Chapters XXIV, XXXI, and XXXII; 
and in my "Introduction to Philosophy," Chapter IX. 

6 It should be noted that, if the panpsychist does not make the external 
world idea or percept, but accepts a world really external, only insisting that all 
matter is animated, I should have no quarrel with him save in his extension of 
the distribution of minds. But such a doctrine can scarcely, I think, be called 
panpsychism, since it admits an external world that is not psychical. 

7 W. Wundt, "System der Philosophic," 3 te Auflage, Leipzig, 1907, Bd. I, 
S. 27-34, 87-92. 

8 Ibid., S. 31, 89, 370 ff. 

9 Ibid., S. 115. 

10 Ibid., S. 325. 

11 Ibid., S. 382-393- 

12 Ibid., S. 391-393- 

13 Ibid., S. 376-382. 

14 Ibid., S. 402-406. 
16 Ibid., S. 434-436. 

16 Ibid., S. 376-382. 

17 Ibid., S. 434-436. 

18 Those curious to trace the history of the gradual sublimation of the mind 
into that transcendental shade "apperception" may be interested in the dis- 
cussion of the subject in Chapter V of my " System of Metaphysics." 

19 Wundt, "System," I, S. 433-434. It is just to bear in mind that Wundt's 
"System of Philosophy" is in no sense the product of his ripe and scholarly old 
age. It was adopted in his youth, and has since undergone little change. See 
the Preface to the first edition, Leipzig, 1889, and compare that edition with 
the third, issued in 1907. 

Chapter XIII 

1 Bradley, "Appearance and Reality," second edition, London, 1897, Intro- 
duction, p. 5. I take Mr. Bradley's doctrine as it is presented in this volume. 
It does not appear to me that he has made any significant modifications of it in 
the articles which have since been written by him. The book is, moreover, 
within the reach of everyone, whereas scattered papers, which might here and 
there have been cited in place of the book, are not so easy to come at. 

2 Ibid., pp. 5-6. 

3 Mr. Bradley cannot, I think, object to my changing somewhat the order of 
the material presented in his book. He states that he has himself followed no 
rule of progress (p. 135), and that the order of the book seemed to him a matter 
of no great importance (Appendix, p. 553). 

4 Ibid., Chapter XIV, p. 144. 

5 Chapter XXII, p. 275. 

6 Ibid., pp. 275 ff. 



282 The World We Live In 

7 Chapter XXII, pp. 273 ff.; XXIII, pp. 305-307. 

8 Chapter XXII, pp. 284-285. 

9 Chapters II and III. 

10 Chapters IV and XVIII. 

11 Chapters V and VI. 

12 Chapter VII. 

13 Chapter VIII. 

14 Chapter IX, p. 75. 

15 Chapter XXIII, pp. 305-307. 

16 Chapter XXIV, pp. 362-363. 

17 Chapter XXII, pp. 279, 267, and 283. 

18 Berkeley, "Principles," §§ 109, 146. 

19 "Appearance and Reality," Chapter XIV, p. 145 : "... a vicious abstrac- 
tion whose existence is meaningless nonsense, and is therefore not possible." 

20 Chapters IX, p. 122; XIV, p. 157; XXV, pp. 422-423, 448-449; et 
passim. 

21 Chapter X, p. 132, et passim. 

22 Chapters XIII, p. 140; XIV, p. 153. 

23 Chapter XXIV, p. 370. 

24 Chapter XXIV. 

25 Chapter XIV, pp. 147-148; cf. p. 158. 

26 Chapter XIII, p. 135. 

27 Chapter XII, p. 132. 

28 Chapter XIII, pp. 138-139. 

29 Chapter XIV, p. 144. 

30 Chapter XXII, pp. 278-279. 

31 Chapter XXVII, p. 529- 

32 Chapter XXVI. 

33 Chapter XXIII. 

34 Chapters IV, XVIII, and XXVI, pp. 498-5°°- 

35 Chapter XVII, p. 203. 

36 Chapter XIV, p. 160. 

37 Chapter XXVII, p. 520. 

38 Chapter XXVI, p. 472. 

39 Chapter XIV, p. 144. 

40 Chapter XXVII, p. 529- 

41 Chapter XXVII, p. 511. 

42 Ibid. 

43 Chapters XVII, p. 204; XX, p. 244; XXVI, p. 488. 

44 Chapter XVII, p. 204. 

46 Chapter XXVII, pp. 527, 524. 

46 Chapter XVI, p. 260. 

47 Chapter XXVII, pp. 511, 551. 

48 Chapter XXVI, p. 487. 



Notes 283 



« Chapters XIV, p. 160; XVI, p. 196; XVII, pp. 201-203; XVIII, p. 205; 
XX, pp. 243-244; XXII, pp. 266, 281; XXVI, p. 468. 

60 Chapter XXVII, pp. 531 ff. 

61 Chapter XXV, p. 419. 

62 Chapter XXVII, p. 533. 

63 Chapter XXVII, p. 534. 

64 Chapter XXV, p. 445- 
56 Chapter XXV, p. 454- 

66 Chapter XXV, p. 445. 

67 Chapter XXVII, p. 550. 

68 Chapters XIV, p. 160; XXIII, pp. 305, 345, 358; XXVII, pp. 520,522, 544. 

59 Chapter XXVI, p. 482. 

60 Chapter XXV, pp. 427-428. 

61 Chapter XXVI, p. 500. 

Chapter XIV 

1 "The World and the Individual," by Josiah Royce, New York, Volume I, 
1900, Volume II, 1901. The work has been reprinted a number of times. I 
take Professor Royce's Idealism as it is set forth in this book ; he regards it as 
essentially the same as the doctrine presented in his earlier works, beginning 
with his first book, published in 1885 (see the Preface to Volume II). The reader 
has small excuse for failing to grasp Professor Royce's reasonings, whether he 
may be inclined to assent to them or not. The argument is presented in detail 
at least six times (Volume I, Lecture I, pp. 19-43; Lecture VII, pp. 265-342; 
Lecture VIII, pp. 349-360; Lecture IX, pp. 385-396; Lecture X, pp. 433-460; 
Volume II, Lecture VI, pp. 270-277). Moreover, the briefer returns to the 
argument, or to single aspects of it, are numberless. 

2 Volume I, Lecture I, p. 19. 

3 Ibid., pp. 22-23. 

4 Ibid., p. 25. 
B Ibid., p. 26. 

6 Ibid., p. 27. 

7 Ibid., pp. 27-31 ; Lecture VII, pp. 271-272. 

8 Lecture I, pp. 26-42; Lecture VII, pp. 335-342; Lecture X, pp. 441-466; 
Volume II, Lecture VI, pp. 270 ff. 

9 See the detailed discussion in Volume I, Lecture VII, pp. 300-342. 

10 Ibid., p. 325. 

11 Ibid., p. 327. 

12 Ibid., p. 328. 

13 Ibid., p. 329. 

14 Lecture I, pp. 39-40. 
16 Ibid., p. 38. 

16 Ibid. 



284 The World We Live In 

17 Lecture VII, pp. 297-299. 

18 Ibid., p. 298. 

19 Ibid., p. 298. 

20 Ibid., p. 297. 

21 Lecture IX, p. 386. 

22 Lecture VII, pp. 337-342 ; Lecture IX, pp. 385-391 ; Supplementary Essay, 
pp. 571 ff. 

23 Lecture VII, pp. 329-330. 

24 Volume I, Supplementary Essay, p. 581. 

25 Ibid., p. 545. 

26 Ibid., p. 501. 

27 Volume I, Lecture VI, pp. 260-262. 

28 Lecture VII, p. 341 ; Supplementary Essay, p. 566. 

29 Supplementary Essay, p. 567. 

30 Lecture VII, pp. 341-342. 

31 Supplementary Essay, pp. 505-506. 

32 Ibid., p. 511. 

33 Ibid., p. 533. 

34 Ibid. 

35 Ibid., pp. 526, 534. 

36 Ibid., pp. 537-538. 

37 Ibid., pp. 512-519 ; Volume II, Lecture X, pp. 445-452. 

38 Volume II, Lecture X, p. 446. 

39 Ibid., pp. 451-452. 

40 Ibid., p. 452. 

41 Volume I, Supplementary Essay, pp. 502-507. 

42 Volume II, Lecture II, p. 56. 

43 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 

44 Ibid., p. 57. 

45 Ibid., p. 59. 

46 Ibid., p. 62. 

47 Ibid., p. 63. 

48 Volume I, Lecture VII, p. 281. 

49 Ibid., pp. 283, 290. 

50 Ibid., p. 286. 

51 Ibid., p. 297. 

52 Ibid., p. 320. 

63 Ibid., pp. 324, 327. 

54 This doctrine of human omniscience and invincible inattention is not a 
passing thought, taken up and forgotten again by the author. See Volume 

n, pp. 53-63 ; also pp. 149, 307. 

55 Volume I, Lecture VII, p. 334. 

66 Supplementary Essay, pp. 494 fT. 

87 There is adduced, to be sure, an argument to prove that "fragmentary" 



Notes 285 

being cannot be the Whole of Being ; but, as it appears to me to have no neces- 
sary connection with the problem of the infinite spread of the finite, or with the 
self-representative systems that interest the mathematician, I omit a dis- 
cussion of it here. I have criticized the argument elsewhere ; see my " System 
of Metaphysics," pp. 585 ff. In "The World and the Individual" the argu- 
ment is presented in Volume I, Lecture VIII, pp. 369-374. 

68 Volume I, Lecture IX, p. 396. 

69 E.g., Berkeley, "Principles," § 24; Bradley, "Appearance and Reality," 
Chapter XIV, p. 144; Chapter XXII, pp. 278-279. 

Chapter XV 

1 "The World and the Individual," Volume II, Lecture IV, pp. 164-165. 

2 Ibid., pp. 165-166. 

3 Ibid., pp. 170-171. 

4 Ibid., p. 172. 

6 Ibid., pp. 177-178. 

6 Ibid., pp. 181-182. 

7 Ibid., pp. 186 ff., 225. 

8 Ibid., p. 193. 

9 Ibid., p. 197; Lecture V, pp. 207, 224. 
"Lecture IV, p. 202. 

11 Lecture V, p. 208. 

12 Ibid., pp. 209-213. 

13 Lecture IV, p. 204. 

14 Lecture V, p. 224. 

15 Ibid., pp. 226-227. 

16 Volume I, Lecture IX, p. 396. 

17 Ibid., p. 397. 

"Volume II, Lecture III, pp. 113-115. 

19 Ibid., p. 115. 

20 Ibid., p. 116. 

21 Ibid., pp. 1 1 6-1 1 7. 

22 Ibid., p. 113. 

23 Ibid., pp. 126-130. 

24 Ibid., pp. 133-138. 
26 Ibid., pp. 138-147. 

26 Ibid. 

27 Ibid., p. 147. 

28 Lecture X, p. 445. 

29 Lecture VII, p. 325. 

30 Volume I, Lecture X, p. 464; Volume II, Lecture VII, pp. 292-294. 

31 Volume I, Lecture X, p. 467 ; Volume II, Lecture III, p. 148. 

32 Volume I, Lecture X, p. 468; Volume II, Lecture VII, p. 293. 



286 The World We Live In 

33 Volume II, Lecture VIII, p. 374. 

34 Volume II, Lecture V, p. 232. 

35 Ibid., p. 233. The expression "time-span" does not appear to me to be 
here used in a sense identical with that explained earlier. As the matter does 
not affect the argument for immortality, I pass it over. 

36 Ibid. 

37 Lecture X, pp. 435-436. 

38 Ibid., p. 437. 

39 Ibid., p. 440. 

40 Ibid., p. 441. 

41 Ibid., pp. 441-442. 

42 Ibid., p. 442. 

43 Ibid. 

44 Volume I, Lecture VIII, p. 380. 
46 Ibid., Lecture X, p. 470. 

46 Volume II, Lecture VIII, p. 374. 

47 Ibid., Lecture II, p. 102 ; Lecture VII, p. 298. 

48 Ibid., Lecture VII, p. 327 ; Lecture III, p. 148. 

49 Ibid., Lecture VIII, p. 374. 

60 Ibid. 

61 Ibid., Lecture IV, pp. 197-204; Lecture V,pp. 207, 214-219, and pp. 224 ff. 

62 "Now as a finite being, confined to this instant, you do not experience my 
experience, nor in the same finite sense do I now and here experience your 
experience. . . . Whoever asserts, then, that human experience exists, as a body 
consisting of the many experiences of various human observers, asserts what no 
finite human observer ever has, at any moment, experienced. For I insist, no 
man ever yet at any instant himself observed that mankind as a body, or that 
any man but himself, was observing facts." Volume I, Lecture VIII, pp. 363- 
364. Compare: Volume II, Lecture IV, pp. 168-180; Lecture V, pp. 228- 
229; Lecture VI, pp. 256-258, 260-265. 

Chapter XVI 

1 "Pragmatism," pp. 66-67, 2 33 _2 34- How far the dialogue reported in this 
chapter does justice to the philosophies of Christian and Faithful, I am willing 
to leave to the judgment of the attentive reader of "Pragmatism," by William 
James, London, 1907, and "Studies in Humanism," by F. C. S. Schiller, London, 
1907. Naturally, no one has a right to make either of these writers directly 
responsible for anything that he has not actually said in so many words. A 
very large number of things thus said have, however, been incorporated into the 
conversation, and references have been given. That they are citations has, in 
most instances, not been indicated, to avoid disfiguring the text and annoying 
the reader who may be willing to take my words on trust. Why I have not 
thought it worth while to quote from or refer to later controversial articles is 



Notes 287 

made clear in the latter part of the chapter. It is also made clear that I my- 
self regard it as an injustice to hold the writers in question literally responsible 
even for the quotations from their works. In William James's latest volume, 
"Some Problems of Philosophy" (London, 191 1), I find much that is in- 
teresting and stimulating, but nothing that leads me to modify my sketch of 
his pragmatism. Nor have I thought it worth while to quote from Dr. Schil- 
ler's "Formal Logic" (London, 1912). This interesting work is largely a 
polemic. It does not, I think, bring forward any new arguments for Human- 
ism, nor does the author in it retract any statements that he has made before. 

2 " Pragmatism," p. 54. 

3 Ibid., p. 259. 

4 Ibid., p. 260. 

5 Ibid., p. 215. 

6 Ibid., p. 79. 

7 Ibid., p. 257. 

8 Ibid., p. 161. 

9 Ibid., p. 166. 

10 Ibid., p. 259. 

11 Ibid., pp. 256-257. 

12 Ibid., p. 259. 

13 Ibid. 

14 Ibid., pp. 134-138. 

15 Ibid., p. 161. 

16 Ibid., p. 166. 

17 Ibid., pp. 256-257. 
ls Ibid., pp. 239-243. 

19 Ibid., pp. 261-264. 

20 Ibid., p. 257. 

21 Ibid., pp. 222-223. 

22 Ibid., p. 216. 

23 Ibid. 

24 Ibid., p. 161. 

26 Ibid., pp. 222-223. 

26 Ibid., pp. 260-261. 

27 Ibid., pp. 8, 218, 224, 256-259. 

28 Ibid., pp. 79-80. 

29 Ibid., pp. 79, 118-119. 

30 Ibid., pp. 59-64. 

31 Ibid., pp. 222-223. 

32 Ibid., p. 54. 

33 Ibid., pp. 252-257. 

34 Ibid., pp. 258-259. 

35 Ibid., pp. 218, 224. 

36 Ibid., p. 79. 



88 The World We Live In 

37 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 

38 Ibid., pp. 73-75- 

39 Ibid., p. 242. 

40 Ibid., p. 204. 

41 Ibid., pp. 59-61. 

42 Ibid., p. 244. 

43 Ibid., "p. 186. 

44 Ibid., p. 244. 

45 Ibid., p. 205. 

46 Ibid., p. 245. 

47 Ibid., p. 211. 

48 Ibid., p. 215. 

49 Ibid., p. 213. 

50 Ibid., pp. 222-223. 

51 Ibid., p. 216. 

62 Ibid., p. 245. 

63 Ibid., p. 233. 
54 Ibid. 

65 Ibid., pp. 251-253. 

66 Ibid., p. 255. 

57 "Studies in Humanism," XIX, p. 444. 

68 "Humanism," by F. C. S. Schiller, London, 1903, II, p. 31. 

59 "Studies in Humanism," VII, p. 186. 

60 Ibid., pp. 186-187. 

61 Ibid., p. 187. 

62 Ibid. 

63 Ibid. 

64 Ibid., p. 188. 

65 Ibid., XIX, p. 430. 

66 Ibid., p. 432. 

67 Ibid., p. 433. 

68 Ibid., p. 444. 

69 Ibid., p. 445. 

70 Ibid., VII, p. 190. 

71 Ibid., I, p. 11. 

72 Ibid., XIX, p. 445- 

73 Ibid., V, p. 143. 

74 Ibid., I, p. 5. 
7B Ibid., p. 6. 

76 Ibid., V, p. 151. 

77 Ibid., p. 152. 

78 Ibid., p. 154. 

79 Ibid., p. 155. 

80 Ibid., p. 156. 



Notes 289 



81 Ibid., I, p. 5. 

82 Ibid., p. 6. 

83 Ibid., VII, p. 182. 

84 Ibid., p. 183. 

85 Ibid., I, p. 6. 

86 Ibid. 

87 "Pragmatism," pp. 245-255. 

88 "Studies in Humanism," VII, p 

89 Ibid., p. 189. 

90 Ibid. 
« Ibid. 

92 "Pragmatism," p. 225. 

93 "Studies in Humanism," I, p. 6. 
"Ibid., Vin, p. 195. 

95 Ibid., XIX, p. 432. 

96 Ibid., VII, p. 198. 

97 Ibid., I, p. 11. 

98 " Pragmatism," p. 257. 



Chapter XVII 

1 See the sympathetic account of Mysticism inRoyce's "The World and the 
Individual," Volume I, Lecture IV. 



INDEX 



Absolute, Dr. Bradley and the, 191-104 ; 
Professor Royce on the, Chapters XIV, 
XV ; implied in every idea, 202 ff . 

Agrippa, 23. 

Albee, E., 276. 

Anaxagoras, 20. 

Annihilation, and disappearance, 48. 

Appearances, and things, 16-31; see 
Idealism ; Kantian treatment of, Chap- 
ter VI; reality of, Chapter VII; 
the word misconceived, 97 ; signifi- 
cance of sense-organs, 102-108; the 
New Realism and, Chapter IX; the 
Mind-stuff doctrine and, 168 ff. ; Dr. 
Bradley and, 187 ff. ; Pragmatism and, 
Chapter XVI. 

Aristippus, 21, 23. 

Aristotle, 21, 22, 54, 89. 

Aspects, of the world, Chapter VIII. 

Atomists, 20. 

Atoms, see Science. 

Augustine, 24, 25. 

Bacon, Francis, 9. 

Bakewell, C. M., 276. 

Being, the Parmenidean, 18, 33; conceived 

as the Limit, 203. 
Berkeley, 32 ff. ; his doctrine, Chapters III, 

IV ; Kant's relation to, Chapters V, VI ; 

Chapter XI, 164; the New Idealism 

and, 186 ff. 
Bosanquet, B., 276. 
Bradley, F. H., his doctrine, Chapter 

XIII; references to, 281-283. 

Christian, 229 ff. 

Clifford, W. K., 171 ff., 181-182. 

Common Sense, and science, 10 ; Berkeley 
and, 39 ; Kant and, 68 ; the New Real- 
ism and, Chapter XI ; the New Ideal- 
ism and, 225-226. 

Continuous Existence, of things, 6 ; Berke- 
ley and, 48; in the New Realism, 121 
ff.; Dr. Bradley on, 185 ff.; Professor 
Royce on, 216. 

Corpuscles, see Science. 

Creighton, J. E., 276. 



Darwin, C, 105, 106, 261. 
Death, Professor Royce on, 221, 223-225. 
Dedekind, 206. 
Democritus, 54. 
Descartes, 26, 66, 84, 135. 
Duplicate World, doctrine of, 26-28; 
Kant's position, 73-74. 

Eject, doctrine of, 171. 

Empedocles, 20, 54. 

Epicurus, 22. 

Eternal, argument for eternal knowledge, 
217 ff. ; the temporal and eternal 
orders, 219-220; what eternal knowl- 
edge implies, 224. 

Everybody's World, its general features, 1- 
15; its problem, 16-31 ; Idealism and, 
39 ff., and Chapter IV ; the World as 
Phenomenon and, Chapter VII; its 
many aspects, Chapter VIII; what is 
taken for granted in, 119 ff. ; secondary 
qualities of bodies in, 131 ff. ; its general 
features reexamined, ChapterXI ; Mind- 
stuff and, 174; discredited by Dr. 
Bradley, 191 ff. ; by Professor Royce, 
225-226; the philosopher and, 257 ff. 

Existence, Berkeleyan sense of, see Berke- 
ley; meaning of, 121 ff. ; Professor 
Royce's conception, 216 ff. 

External, meaning of word, 114 ff. ; ex- 
ternal world immediately experienced, 
Chapter IX; secondary qualities of 
bodies external, Chapter X; external 
meanings, Chapter XIV. 

Fact, pragmatic view of, 241-242, 244- 

245 ; facts not true, 246. 
Faithful, 229 ff. 
Foreknowledge, God's, 224. 
Freedom, man's, 220, 223. 

God, Berkeley's argument, 41, 51-53; the 
World as, 127; panpsychism and, 182; 
Dr. Bradley on, 184, 193; Professor 
Royce on, Chapters XIV, XV ; implied 
in every idea, 202 ff. ; unity of life and 
meaning, 217; God's will, 220. 

Gorgias, 21. 



291 



292 



Index 



Hamilton, Sir W., 55- 
Hobhouse, L. T., 280. 
Holt, E. B., p. viii. 
Humanism, 241 ff. 
Hume, D., 61, 68, 72. 

Idea, see Idealism; the Platonic, 33; 
Locke's definition, 34; the World as, 
127 ; internal and external meanings of, 
200 fi. 

Idealism, the Berkeleyan, Chapters III, 
IV ; the Kantian, Chapter V ; Plato's, 
33; New Idealism, 43, 59; formal, 
critical, dogmatic, and skeptical, 66; 
Kant's refutation of, 80 2. ; Mind-stuff 
doctrine and. 182; New Idealism, 
Chapters XIII, XIV, XV. 

Immediacy, of our knowledge of external 
things, Chapter IX; Chapter XI, p. 
156 ff. 

Immortality, Berkeley on, 42 ; Professor 
Royce on, 220, 223-225. 

Independence, of things, Berkeley, 48; 
the New Realist on, Chapter IX; sec- 
ondary qualities of bodies and, 131 ff. ; 
Dr. Bradley on, 185 ff.; Professor 
Royce on, 216. 

Infinite, how attained, 204 ff. 

Internal, meaning of the word, 114 ff.; 
secondary qualities of bodies, Chapter 
X ; internal meanings, Chapter XIV. 

James, W., his pragmatism, Chapter XVI ; 
will to believe, 262 ; references to works 
of, 286-289. 

Kant, 30; as idealist. Chapter V; his 
phenomenalism, Chapter VI; defense 
of his phenomenalism, Chapter VII; 
on aspects of the world, Chapter VIII ; 
the New Realism and, 127-128. 

Kemp-Smith, N., p. viii. 

Keyserling, H. von, 280. 

Kiilpe, O., p. viii. 

Locke, 26, 34, 54, 130, 132. 

Lodge, Sir O., 143. 

Logical Theory, Pragmatism as, 248- 

251. 
Lucretius, 115. 

McGilvary, E. B., p. viii. 
Mach, E., 58. 

Map, illustration of the, 205-212. 
Marvin, W. T., p. viii. 



Materialism, Dr. Bradley on, 184-185. 
Mathematicians, the infinite and the, 204 

ff., 212 ff. 
Meanings, internal and external, Chapter 

XIV. 
Medieval Philosophy, 24. 
Mental and Physical, the contrast of, 

114 ff. 
Mill, J. S, 54, 95, 123. 
Miller, Dickinson S., p. viii, 275. 
Minds, common sense treatment of, 7; 

New Realist's treatment of, 153 ff. 
Mind-stuff, 167 ff. 
Monism, 99. 
Montague, W. P., p. viii. 
Moore, G. E., p. viii. 

Nature, Professor Royce's conception, 

215 ff. 
New Idealism, 43, 59; Chapters XIII, 

XIV, XV. 
Noumenon, 75 ff. ; see Thing-in-itself. 

Objective Order, see Orders. 
Occam, 24. 

Omniscience, man's, 207-208. 
Orders, of phenomena, 86, 11 2-1 27. 

Panpsychism, see Mind-stuff. 

Papini, 234. 

Parmenides, 18, 33, 65. 

Part, equal to whole, 207. 

Pearson, K., 58. 

Perception, not the measure of existence, 
78 ff. 

Perry, R. B., p. viii. 

Phenomenon, the World as, Chapters VI, 
VII; the word misunderstood, 97; 
aspects of the phenomenal world, Chap- 
ter VIII; the New Realism and phe- 
nomena, Chapter IX. 

Philosopher, the varieties of, 13; not a 
colorless reason, 264; his religious 
character, 265-266. 

Physical things, common sense and, 5 ff.; 
function of the physical in ordering 
phenomena, 88 ff. ; contrast of physical 
and mental, 1148.; Professor Royce's 
conception of, 216-217. 

Pierre d'Ailly, 24. 

Pitkin, W. B., p. viii. 

Plato, 21, 33, 54. 

Pluralism, 7, 99. 

Possibilities, of perception, see Mill; of 
existence, 123. 



Index 



293 



Pragmatism, Chapter XVI; classes of 
pragmatists, 249; startling character 
of, 257. 

Prophecy, Pragmatism as, 247 ff. 

Protagoras, 21, 23. 

Pyrrho, 23. 

Qualities, primary and secondary, Chapter 
X. 

Realism, the New, Chapter IX; its treat- 
ment of primary and secondary quali- 
ties of bodies, Chapter X; Kant and 
the New Realism, 126-128; the Thing- 
in-itself and, 130; the Unknowable 
and, 130; atoms and corpuscles and, 
142-147 ; common sense and, Chapter 
XI. 

Reality, as mind-stuff, 168 ff . ; as will, 
178-182; Dr. Bradley's account of, 
191-194; Professor Royce on, 202 ff. 

Reason, the World as, 127. 

Religion, Dr. Bradley's conception, 193 ; 
the philosopher's attitude towards, 
268 ff. 

Royce, J., his doctrine, Chapters XIV, 
XV ; references, 283-286, 289. 

Russell, B., p. viii. 

Schiller, F. C. S., his Humanism, Chapter 
XVI; references, 286-289. 

Schoolmen, 54. 

Science, and common sense, 10, 92 ff . ; and 
the secondary qualities of bodies, 133- 
134; on atoms and corpuscles, 141 ff . ; 
the pragmatist and, 243. 

Secondary qualities, Chapter X. 

Sensation, see Idea; significance of sense- 
organs, 102-108, 109 ff. 



Skepticism, criticism of, 253-254. 

Skeptics, 22, 54. 

Spaulding, E. G., p. viii. 

Spencer, H., 29. 

Stoics, 22. 

Stout, G. F., p. viii. 

Strong, C. A., his panpsychism, Chapter 

XII. 
Subjective, phenomena distinguished as 

objective and, 86 ; see Orders. 
Substance, 154 ff. 
Superstition, 269-270. 

Theology, Dr. Bradley on, 184. 

Thing-in-itself, 30, 82. 

Things, appearances and, 16-31 ; the in- 
dependence of, Berkeley, 48; immedi- 
ately perceived, Kant, 82 ff. ; New 
Realist's treatment of, Chapter IX. 

Time-span, 218 ff. 

Truth, pragmatic conception of, 232-246; 
ultimate, 259. 

Ultimate Truth, superstition regarding, 

250- 
Universe, as understood by Dr. Bradley, 

191-194 ; implied in every idea, 202 ff. ; 

the pragmatic, 233 ff. 
Unknowable, 29, 73, 154, 254-255. 

Will, the world as, 178-182; time and 
God's will, 220; will to believe, 262 ff. 

Woodbridge, F. J. E., p. viii. 

Woodcutter, illustration of, 109, 137. 

World, its many aspects, Chapter VIII. 

Wundt, W., and the World as Will, Chap- 
ter XII. 

Zeno, 18, 19. 



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